Dos condicionantes naturais à construção social da vulnerabilidade: as inundações urbanas na bacia do córrego Humaitá, Juiz de Fora, MG, Brasil

Abstract

The occurrence of natural disasters around the world has come more engendering losses and damages to the society. The flood represents one of the disasters of biggest occurrence in different parts of the planet, affecting agriculture, the rural population and also the urban one, among others. The Humaitá stream watershed in the municipality of Juiz de Fora – MG which is inserted in the reality and often suffers with flood events affecting all the resident population, causing damage and loss. In the urbanization process, rivers are frequently transformed and the landscape modified, as a result, the perception of the risks by the population becomes more evident. It is noteworthy that the risks are unevenly distributed in society, where a part of this tends to suffer more with the effects and damage caused by the dangerous events, since the construction of the urban space happens in an unequal and excluding way. It is noticed that the production of the urban space in the studied watershed happened in an excluding manner, with the capitalist relations degrading the nature and the men himself suffering with the inequality of power, where it is visible the positions of each social class on the environment. Therefore, this research proposes to understand the relations between floods and the reproduction of the urban space in a part of the municipality of Juiz de Fora (The Humaitá stream watershed, north zone of the city). In order to identify the areas of susceptibility to flooding in the Humaitá stream watershed it was adopted the morphometric analysis methodology using the following parameters: basin gradient, roughness index, drainage density, Drainage Efficiency Index, compactness coefficient and form factor associated with the morphological interpretation of the basin. In the first results, the Humaitá stream watershed showed itself little susceptible to flood, though it was found that the second order sub-basins are the best indications for the public power to act in the understanding and management of flood events in the studied basin. To understand the social vulnerability it was used the Vulnerability Index technique through socioeconomic data (income, education, population density, age and number of residents) from the census sectors and also from field observations of land occupations. Finally, it was understood that the urban growth and expansion do not only increase the flood susceptibility but also modify the risk exposition and the social vulnerability from the communities. Even the locations of higher susceptibility many times not correspond to the higher vulnerability, the study showed that it is possible to concentrate efforts to include the subjects in the physical geography studies and enable a vision beyond the natural elements, seeking a connection between the physical and the human.