Mapping social risk areas to floods in Southern Italy: a spatial analysis for local emergency planning and place-based risk reduction policies

Hazards develop into disasters when natural events impact on structures, infrastructure, and populations. Since both the physical and social components of disasters are influenced by spatial and temporal factors, understanding the interaction between natural hazards and the socioeconomic environment at the local scale remains a key challenge in disaster studies. In this paper, a multidimensional approach that merges population exposure, social vulnerability, alongside natural hazards, is proposed as a tool for local emergency planning and place-based risk reduction policies. The case in point refers to flood hazard at a suburban scale across three metropolitan cities in Southern Italy: Bari (Apulia region), Naples (Campania region) and Reggio Calabria (Calabria region). By means of national open-source data, cartographic and statistical techniques are employed in order to map critical areas exposed to social risk as a consequence to floods at the enumeration area level. Five critical areas are identified in the city of Bari and Reggio Calabria, particularly within submunicipality 4 (Carbonara – Ceglie – Loseto) and 10 (Galina) respectively. In Naples, six critical areas are extracted from the analysis with the highest concentration of inhabitants at-risk found in submunicipality 10 (Bagnoli – Fuorigrotta). These outcomes can support disaster risk reduction strategies tailored to the exposure and vulnerability levels of specific population subgroups.