Una metodologia basata sull’uso di dati satellitari per la stima della popolazione esposta al rischio d’inondazione / A remote-sensing based methodology for the estimation of population in flood prone areas

This work presents a general and simple remote sensing-based procedure for the assessment of the popula- tion exposed to riverine flood, which allows to (i) redistribute the population provided by census data within administrative/census units; (ii) quickly update flood exposure maps with a high refresh rate, making this approach particularly suitable where urbanization and population densities may change at a sub-yearly ti- me scale. The paper explores the possibility to calibrate reliable relationships between satellite nightlights intensity and urbanization density from global available cartography to update population exposure maps each time new nightlights intensity maps are ready for use. Italy is used as a test case for nightlight inten- sity/urban density curves calibration and validation.