Challenges and perspectives of innovative digital ecosystems designed to monitor and warn natural disasters in Brazil

Abstract

The increasing figures of natural disasters and related human and material losses represent a major challenge to be faced by the Brazilian government, the scientific community and civil society all together. Landslides and floods resulting from climatic extremes have been associated not only to global climatic changes, but mostly due to the increase of population vulnerability and the lack of effective mitigation actions. Core governmental responses to mitigate such losses include the creation of operational centers for disaster monitoring and management -Cemaden (National Early Warning and Monitoring Centre of Natural Disasters) and CENAD (Centro Nacional de Gerenciamento de Riscos e Desastres). The establishment of these institutions associated with investments to map risky areas are key to implement landslides and floods monitoring systems. Despite significant investments, the implementation of such natural disaster monitoring systems depend much on cooperative actions among organizations and entities from different sectors of the society. The main objective of this work is to present the challenges and perspectives of innovative digital ecosystems designed to effectively monitor, warn and respond to natural disasters related to landslides and floods in Brazil. The several methodologies adopted make use of technical, scientific and empirical knowledge to establish a rain gauge network of 1400 automatic pluviometers and 1100 semiautomatic pluviometers, distributed in more than 800 municipalities defined as priority ones by the Brazilian National Plan of Risk Management and Response to Natural Disasters. Pilot projects of landslides monitoring systems are also included in the methodology in key municipalities where the number of human losses has been significant in recent disasters. In order to develop such challenging methodologies, Cemaden has worked together with the Center for Information Technology Renato Archer (CTI), CENAD, a number of research institutions, the private sector, local and regional governments and non-governmental organizations as well as the civil society. The combination of different types of knowledge, technological approaches and levels of interaction to population under risk of such a variety of organizations shall configure a collective intelligence able to improve the efficiency and confidence of early warnings of landslides and floods, as well as to promote further commitment of local governments and communities to respond to warnings. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.4 [Information storage and retrieval]:Systems and software -current awareness systems (selective dissemination of information--SDI), information networks, performance evaluation (efficiency and effectiveness), question-answering (fact retrieval), user profiles and alerts systems.

Landslide risk reduction measures: A review of practices and challenges for the tropics

“…The fact that the latter is more complicated explains why LS risk mapping is less implemented than susceptibility and hazard mapping (16 versus 97 publications). A systematic procedure for assessing LS risk at national scale is in most cases lacking (but not necessarily desirable), except for countries such as Brazil (Soler et al, 2013), Cuba (Abella and van Westen, 2007), India (van Westen et al, 2012), Malaysia (Abdullah, 2013) and Vietnam (Long et al, 2010). Important to note here is that an exclusive promotion of LS susceptibility maps for landslide risk zoning, without site-specific hazard assessments for diagnosis and design of landslide hazard reduction measures, might potentially lead to a lack of effective LS mitigation on the ground (Anderson et al, 2014).…”

Dynamic modeling of an early warning system for natural disasters

“…The creation of CEMADEN was an immediate response to the worst disaster that ever happened in Brazil in January, 2011: a sequence of landslides and floods that caused the death of nearly 900 people in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro state (Soler et al, ).…”

The evolution of the protection systems against natural disasters in Brazil: laws, agencies, information and knowledge

“…It was a response to the worst natural disaster recorded in the country: the disasters in the Mountainous Region of Rio de Janeiro, in January of 2011. In that period, landslides and severe flooding caused the death of about 900 people [9,16]. Other actions taken by the government were to hire new employees and expand the infrastructure of the National Center for Risk and Disasters Management (NCRDM), which was connected to the National Secretariat of Civil Defense (NSCD) [9].…”