migrbc

Introduction

This package provides mechanisms for classifying border crossings using a rules-based methodology. The goal of performing this type of classification is to identify any potential long-term migrants. A long-term migration is defined as a border crossing involving a change in residence status. A border crossing counts as a long-term migration to/from a country if it entails a change from non-residence to residence or residence to non-residence. The rules-based classification that used to determine a long-term migration is defined by a threshold duration and a test duration, alternatively named window size. Under a 12/16 rule, for instance, the threshold duration is 12 months and the test duration (window size) is 16 months. With a 9/12 rule, the threshold duration is 9 months and the test duration (window size) is 12 months. For more information about the methodology applied, please visit Stats NZ (2020) https://www.stats.govt.nz/methods/defining-migrants-using-travel-histories-and-the-1216-month-rule.

The main functions are:

• initialize_logger: is used to initialize the futile.logger so that the user can be notified with the current status of running RBC.

• run_rbc: determines long-term migration statuses, and pre-crossing and post-crossing residence statuses, for all crossings where these statuses are not known.

• pre_process: provides a mechanism to divide large data into small chunks.

• plot_mig_hist*: by given a sequence of border crossings for a person, draw a diagram describing that person's migration history.

Installation

Install development version migrbc from GitHub:

devtools::install_github("StatisticsNZ/migrbc")

Install stable version migrbc from CRAN:

devtools::install.packages("migrbc")

Documentation

https://statisticsnz.github.io/migrbc/

Setting up a Logger (Optional)

We applied futile.logger for troubleshooting and hence, provided an utility function for initializing the logger. More information about the logger can be found with the link (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=futile.logger). The parameter log_level is a number in the set of 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 9:

futile.logger::FATAL: 1
futile.logger::ERROR: 2
futile.logger::WARN:  4
futile.logger::INFO:  6
futile.logger::DEBUG: 8
futile.logger::TRACE: 9

Suppresse log messages to the console:

migrbc::initialize_logger(log_level = 1)

Display all type of log messages to the console

migrbc::initialize_logger(log_level = 9)

Copyright and Licensing

The package is Crown copyright (c) 2020, Statistics New Zealand on behalf of the New Zealand Government, and is licensed under the MIT License.

This document is Crown copyright (c) 2020, Statistics New Zealand on behalf of the New Zealand Government, and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.