Population Exposure and Impact Assessment: Benefits of Modeling Urban Land Use in Very High Spatial and Thematic Detail

This paper highlights the benefits that high-level geospatial modeling of urban patterns can provide for real-world applications in the field of population exposure and impact assessment. A set of techniques is described leading to identification of functional and socioeconomic relationships in a suburban environment. Diverse high resolution remote sensing data are classified using Object-Based Image Analysis in order to derive structural land cover information. Georeferenced address data then serve as essential link between this geometric framework and ancillary space-related information such as company and census data. The final very high resolution functional population model (i.e. broken down to address-based building part objects) is consulted for exposure and impact assessments exemplarily shown in two different fictitious scenarios: (1) earthquake hazard and (2) traffic noise propagation. High-detail spatial data sets including functional and socioeconomic information as derived in this study can be of great value in disaster risk management and simulation, but also in regional and environmental planning as well as geomarketing analyses.