Uncovering temporal changes in Europe's population density patterns using a data fusion approach

Knowledge of the spatial and temporal distribution of human population is vital for studying cities, disaster risk management, and infrastructure planning. Yet most information relies on place‑of‑residence statistics, overlooking density changes driven by human mobility. Existing spatio‑temporal assessments are limited in detail and coverage, while promising mobile‑phone data suffer from access and consistency issues. Here, we present a multi‑layered dasymetric approach that fuses official statistics with emerging geospatial sources to produce and validate an EU‑wide dataset of 1 km² population grids capturing intraday (day/night) and monthly variations. The results reproduce and quantify known patterns of European cities’ spatio‑temporal population structure, estimating that daytime population in city centers is, on average, 1.9 times higher than nighttime.

Filipe Batista e Silva, Sérgio Freire, Marcello Schiavina, Konštantín Rosina, Mario Alberto Marín-Herrera, Lukasz Ziemba, Massimo Craglia, Eric Koomen, Carlo Lavalle