Population growth is known as one of the driving forces behind environmental problems, because the growing population demands more and more (non-renewable) resources for its own application.
Population in the world is currently (2020) growing at a rate of around 1.05% per year (down from 1.08% in 2019, 1.10% in 2018, and 1.12% in 2017). The current average population increase is estimated at 81 million people per year.
Growth is usually thought of as a linear process: an increase by a constant amount over a period of time. But in reality it is a quadratic relationship rather than being linear and depends mainly on two parameters:
- Alpha: Difference between birth rate and death rate in %per . Generally there is a direct relation between net growth and this.
- Beta: Resources available in percent .Generally there is a inverse relationship.
So when we tested different models we found out that net growth mainly depends on the above two parameters. Then we verified the results by comparing it with four of the most popular agencies and their prediction
- United States Census Bureau(UN)
- United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
- Maddison
- Worldometers
Our prediction was close enough to the actual results. But it can be improved with more parameters.
Our Api or models requires you to send the following parameters:
- Starting year : The year you want to start simulation from.
- Starting population: The population of starting year.
- Ending year: The year you want to end the simulation.
- Alpha: Default value is 0.025
- Beta: Defualt value is -0.018
Note: The default values of alpha and beta were calculated by running simulation more than 1000 times and the best value was chosen for the model. These values can also be chan
We have hosted the API on heroku and the end point are:
- [https://populationpredictorapp.herokuapp.com/test] This API returns just Hello world its made for testing purpose and is a GET API.
- [https://populationpredictorapp.herokuapp.com/predict] It is a POST API which takes in json in the following format: Eg: {"start_year":"2000", "end_year":"2100", "start_pop":"2.557629e+09", "alpha":"0.025", "beta":"-0.0018" }
The response can be found in the following file: JSON Response
Below is a demo of an app we have created which works on the API: Population Prediction App Video