Combining Geo-Information Technology and Empirical Knowledge to Improve Natural Disaster Early Warning and Monitoring Systems in Brazil

Population growth in urban areas drives people vulnerability to natural disasters, especially in emergent economies like Brazil. The existing automatic pluviometric network is insufficient to provide enough information to monitor and prevent deaths due to landslides and floods in 821 municipalities defined as priority ones in the Brazilian National Plan of Risk Management and Response to Natural Disasters, implemented in 2012. Therefore, aiming to support early warning and monitoring systems and make available near-real time rain data, the National Early Warning and Monitoring Centre of Natural Disasters (Cemaden) has carried out an integrative institutional project to acquire and identify optimal places to install 1400 automatic pluviometers in risk areas of landslides and/or floods, already mapped in more than 350 Brazilian municipalities where existing network is scarce. Using geo-information techniques, the methodology included a deficit analysis to estimate the needed number of pluviometers per municipality. These estimates were used in a cooperative action between Cemaden and institutions at state and municipality levels, especially municipality governments and their civil defenses. A number of technical meetings and fieldwork training were done in 14 from the 27 Brazilian Federal Units in several municipalities to promote the project. Cemaden developed a dedicated web database where the institutions' representatives were able to supply detailed information of suitable sites to install pluviometers inside or nearby risk areas, based on their empirical knowledge of local characteristics. The results so far are very promising as 1, 500 locations have been filled since March 2013, and around 600 were chosen as optimal installation sites using spatial analysis. As the pluviometers installations take place, we expect a significant improvement on the efficiency and confidence of early warnings of landslides and floods as well as more commitment of local governments and communities to respond to warnings.