Synthetic populations are geospatially explicit representations of households and persons. RTI’s nationwide synthetic populations are derived from American Community Survey (ACS) demographic estimates and ACS Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS). These synthetic populations match household spatial distributions at 100M grid cell resolution and household demographic distributions at the census block group resolution. Synthetic populations are inherently different from standard area-based geospatial population estimates because they represent households and individuals as geospatial point features rather than as counts attached to polygon features. In this forum, Mr. Wheaton will present an overview to the design, structure, content and applications of synthetic populations in the geospatial sciences.