Quantificação e identificação espacial da sensibilidade à seca no Ceará: setor urbano

Abstract

The Northeast leads the ranking of the number of people affected by hazards related to natural phenomenon due to the large impacts caused by droughts. This region’s population is the most vulnerable to climate change. Vulnerability consists of sensibility, exposure and adaptive capacity. In order to assist the decision making in water resources management in front of drought issues, this paper presents a method to quantify sensibility to drought for the urban water supply system from the cities of Ceará and spatially identify the areas that demand more attention from political policies. The analysis took into consideration social, economic and urban water demand indicators for each city. The indicators were normalized and divided into four classes of sensibility. Using GIS tools, it was elaborated a map of sensibility to drought, exhibiting the spatial distribution of the sensibility classes though Ceará. The study pointed that extreme sensibility occurs in grouped areas and that 45% of the cities are classified into extreme and high sensibility. However, it is recommended that this study could be added to a study of exposure to drought.