bopR

bopR is the Belgian open population repository for R.

Installation

You can install the development version of bopR from GitHub with:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("sciensanogit/bopR")

Population datasets

bopR stands for Belgian open population repository, as it makes Belgian population data directly available in R. The bopR package contains population files on different geographical levels (municipalities - districts - provinces - regions - communities - country). Therefore, bopR includes datasets on the structure of the population based on the national registries (Statbel: Statistics Belgium), and datasets on demographic projections (FBP: Federal Planning Bureau, Belgium). To this end, bopR relies on the open data that is available at these data provides. In addition, the bopR package includes midpopulation population calculations as calculated in the framework of the Standard Population Mortality Analysis (SPMA), developed by Sciensano.

Statbel

Datasets from Statbel are derived from the Statbel’s OPEN DATA repositories. In the bopR package they are called as follows: * BE_POP_MUNTY: municipalities * BE_POP_ARRD: districts * BE_POP_PROV: provinces (+ Brussels Capital Region for simplicity) * BE_POP_RGN: regions * BE_POP_COMTY: communities * BE_POP: country

Federal Planning bureau

Datasets from Statbel are derived from the Federal Planning Bureau repositories. In the bopR package they are called as follows:

• BE_POP_PROJ_MUNTY: municipalities
• BE_POP_PROJ_ARRD: districts
• BE_POP_PROJ_PROV: provinces (+ Brussels Capital Region for simplicity)
• BE_POP_PROJ_RGN: regions
• BE_POP_PROJ_COMTY: communities
• BE_POP_PROJ: country

for more information on the content of each dataset, you can always consult the help-file by ?BE_POP. The population structure of Belgium over the years was as follows:

Population data by statistical sector

the bopR package also contains population files on statistical sector level (not by sex or age). The dataset is named: BE_POP_SECTOR.

Population projection datasets

the bopR package also contains population projection files on different geographical levels (districts - provinces - regions - country). The datasets are named as follows:

Data sources

The idea for this package is inspired by the BelgiumMaps.StatBel package, developed by Jan Wijffels at BNOSAC.

The population files are obtained from the Statbel open data and the open data from the federal plan bureau (FPB) of Belgium:

• https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/population includes information on the population of Belgium on the 1st of January for each year.
• https://www.plan.be/publications/publication-2255-nl-demografische_vooruitzichten_2021_2070_update_sterke_opwaartse_herziening_van_de_bevolkingsgroei_in_2022 includes information on the population projections of Belgium.

To calculate the mid-year population of year x, one should average the population of year x and year x+1 .