Socio-environmental vulnerability of areas susceptible to mass movements and floods of municipalities in the mountainous region of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract

It is known that there is increasing growth in the number and intensity of natural disasters caused by anthropic - deforestation, waterproofing, urban density, occupation of areas with steep slopes, with intervations of cuts and landfills, occupation on margins of water courses, among others - and natural actions such as relief, geology, slope of the strands and climate change, as evidenced bynational and internacional literature, such as Dilley et al. (2005), Brauch (2005), Cardona (2005) and Tominaga (2015). The Mountainous Region of the State of Rio de Janeiro is known by the recurrent cases of natural disasters, mainly the movements of mass and floods, as evidenced in the news of newspapers and magazines. Most of them occur during the summer, due to the high rainfall indices, resulting in deaths and homeless every year. Based on the fact exposed, this research seeks to perform an analysis, calculating the socio-environmental vulnerability, aiming to fill the existing knowledge gaps in the human dimensions of risk and vulnerability to such disasters. To achieve the proposed objective, environmental susceptibility will be formulated for each municipality and phenomenon, based on the susceptibility letters of the Mineral Resources Research Company (CPRM) (BITAR, 2014). Subsequently, Social Vulnerability will be calculated and, therefore, Socio-environmental Vulnerability. For this methodology, social, economic and environmental indicators will be used, provided by the Brazilian Demographic Census of 2010 and by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE); geoprocessing tools such as ArcGIS; use of the R Studio software; definition of the profile of the population exposed to risk; historical characterization of cities; and the elaboration of the socio-environmental vulnerability maps of the population. (AU)