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activities ? For other facilities such as emergency medical and rescue , it is difficult to allocate demand to land uses when many of the calls are related to crashes . The traditional method for estimating the current and future demand for certain facilities is to use the population as the basis . For example , some states have established a statewide minimum standard of 0 . 3 square feet of library space per capita based on the population of communities meeting minimum thresholds . Yet, communities with high volumes of nonresidents who use library services may need more than 0 . 3 square feet per resident to effectively meet this standard . In the case of police , fire , and emergency medical facilities , the higher the nonresident daytime population , the greater the need is for service relative to the resident population . Moreover, it is not enough to simply add resident population to the number of employees , since the service -demand characteristics of employees can vary considerably by type of industry . Using unweighted population and employment data to estimate facility needs may result in substantial error. For many facilities , there is a convenient way to rationally attribute demand by land use and to estimate aggregate demand for a community . This method is called " functional population . " Functional population is the equivalent number of people occupying space within a community on a 24 - hours -per-day , 7 -days -per-week basis for public facilities providing around -the -clock services , such as police and fire/EMS services ( or alternative time period such as an 11 -hours -per-day, 5 -days -per-week basis for public buildings , which are open on the average only a total of 55 hours per week) . A person living and working in the community will have a functional population coefficient of 1 . 0 . A person living in the community but working elsewhere may spend only 16 hours per day in the community on weekdays and 24 hours per day on weekends for a functional population coefficient of 0 . 76 ( 128 -hour presence divided by 168 hours in one week) . A person commuting into the community to work five days per week would have a functional population coefficient of 0 . 24 ( 40 -hour presence divided by 168 hours in one week) . Similarly , a person traveling into the community to shop at stores , perhaps averaging 8 hours per week, would have a functional population coefficient of 0 . 05 . Functional population thus , is designed to capture the presence of all people within the community , whether residents , workers , or visitors , to arrive at a total estimate of effective population needing to be served . Functional population measures are important to gauge the demand for facilities serving the community 24 hours per day , 7 days per week for services such as police , fire , and emergency medical services , or 11 hours per day , 5 days per week for services such as public building services . This form of adjusting population to help measure real facility needs replaces the popular approach of merely weighting residents two -thirds and workers one -third (Nelson and Nicholas 1992 ) . By estimating the functional population per unit of land use across all major land uses in a community , an estimate of the demand for certain facilities and services in the present and in a future year can be calculated . The following paragraphs explain how functional population is calculated . Tindale -Oliver & Associates , Inc . Indian River County May 2005 II - 7 Impact Fee Study