Proposta metodológica para avaliação da população residente em áreas de risco ambiental: o caso da bacia hidrográfica do Córrego do Onça/MG

Abstract

The main objective of this dissertation is to propose a methodology to analyze over time (from the 1991 census to the 2000 census) the environmental vulnerability of the population living in areas of flood and hillside sliding risks. Environmental vulnerability is considered here as the intersection between risk areas related to the physical environment (natural vulnerability), and socially and economically deprived population groups (social vulnerability). Considering the river basin as the ideal unit of analysis, this dissertation develops a conceptual and methodological approach and proposes an empirical analysis of environmental vulnerability in the Córrego do Onça river basin (located in the metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, Brazil), which has been subject to high population pressures for many decades. In order to accomplish these goals, it was created a Geographical Information System (GIS) which integrates environmental and census data (particularly census tracts) and allows analyzing the spatial distribution of natural (related to the physical environment), population and socioeconomic characteristics in the river basin. The results on natural characteristics were shown more reliable than the results on population and socioeconomic characteristics due to the problems of working with census tracts, which are relatively large units of analysis to investigate populations at risk and their characteristics. Even though, the results show that the population living in areas of higher vulnerability in the river basin faced improvements in basic household services (water provision, garbage and sewage treatment), income and education. Nonetheless, despite these improvements, there is still a large proportion of population living in risk areas, and those areas are still growing at high rates. The conclusion discusses how the methodology developed in this dissertation can be applied to other urban river basins and how it can be a useful tool to inform urban planning in areas of high environmental vulnerability.