Population Exposed to Landslide and Flood Risk in Italy

Italy is one of the European countries most affected by landslides and floods. It counts over 499,000 mass movements with a total area of 21,200 and 23,903 km2 of flood hazard zones. Moreover it is a densely urbanized country with about 200 inhabitants per sq. km. The aim of this work is to estimate the population exposed to landslide and flood risk in Italy, on the basis of the Italian Landslide Inventory, the flood hazard zones, the Italian Population Census data, the high-resolution (HR) Artificial surfaces-Imperviousness Layer (Geoland2) and the Urban Atlas land use data. Two methods of estimation have been implemented at national scale: the former, assuming the resident population uniformly distributed within each census tract; the latter, using the HR Imperviousness Layer in order to spatialize the population within urban settlements of each census tract. The analysis estimates that almost 1 million persons are exposed to landslide risk and over 6 millions to flood risk.