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Satellite nighttime lights reveal increasing human exposure to floods worldwide
Author(s) -
Ceola Serena,
Laio Francesco,
Montanari Alberto
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1002/2014gl061859
Subject(s) - flood myth , flooding (psychology) , environmental science , preparedness , climate change , damages , natural hazard , natural disaster , global warming , climatology , geography , meteorology , geology , oceanography , psychology , archaeology , political science , law , psychotherapist
River floods claim thousands of lives every year, but effective and high‐resolution methods to map human exposure to floods at the global scale are still lacking. We use satellite nightlight data to prove that nocturnal lights close to rivers are consistently related to flood damages. We correlate global data of economic losses caused by flooding events with nighttime lights and find that increasing nightlights are associated to flood damage intensification. Then, we analyze the temporal evolution of nightlights along the river network all over the world from 1992 to 2012 and obtain a global map of nightlight trends, which we associate with increasing human exposure to floods, at 1 km 2 resolution. An enhancement of exposure to floods worldwide, particularly in Africa and Asia, is revealed, which may exacerbate the projected effects of climate change on flood‐related losses and therefore argues for the development of valuable flood preparedness and mitigation strategies.