Desastres ambientais nos assentamentos precários da cidade de Fortaleza-Ceará-Brasil: riscos derivados da integração entre vulnerabilidade social e ameaças naturais

Abstract

This study deals with the risks of environmental disasters in the precarious settlements in Fortaleza City, capital of the State of Ceará, located in the northern portion of the Northeast region of Brazil. The proposed evaluation intends to integrate social and natural elements to identify the risks of environmental disasters, considering the precariousness of housing settlements located in natural environments susceptible to natural threats, identified from the zoning of emerging urban environmental fragility. It is supposed that communities in this situation are most serious in terms of social vulnerability and that is a key factor for the type of risk in question. It is hypothesized that the identification of the most risk-prone areas allows for adequate understanding of the problem. Achieving the research objectives contributes to the understanding of the production and spatialization of "risk areas", considering an integrative methodological perspective, based on a proposal of urban physical geography. As analytical results of the research, 838 precarious settlements were identified in Fortaleza City, distributed in different typologies, and the main natural threats occurring in the urban site were also identified, caused mainly by rainfall, especially floods, flooding, mass movements and storm surge. As synthesis results, the integration of social and natural events from the environmental perspective revealed the existence of 233 precarious settlements located in the zone of emerging urban environmental fragility, exposed to the adverse effects of physical events. In this context, the different risk areas of environmental disasters in Fortaleza City were zoned, considering the main natural threats. The information produced can contribute to a better understanding of the problem in question, highlighting the most serious situations related to the large housing deficit related to the disordered and inadequate occupation of the natural environments that form the urban site.