Crues éclair et inondations urbaines dans le sertão du Nordeste brésilien (Rio Grangeiro, Crato, Ceará) : perception et gestion d’un risque naturel méconnu

Abstract

After a few recent flash-floods including one which occurred in Crato (Ceará) on January 28th 2011, the notion of natural risk remains poorly present in the mentalities and behaviors, as well among the inhabitants as the local actors, and it does not appear in the urban policy, except in the form of more or less isolated measures responding to successive crises. A questionnaire was submitted to a sample of the population in order to evaluate the degree of awareness possibly stimulated by this event and to appreciate how it is taken into account in the recent or expected orientations of risk management in relation with urban planning. Processing the answers shows that, widely turned into a media event, this flood favored a broader and sharper awareness of natural risks, appreciated here through the perception of dangerous hazards, of their causes and possible solutions. According to our results, such a methodology based upon a questionnaire, if used more systematically, might be one of the bases for elaborating programs of risk prevention and management more adapted to the economic and socio-educational context, and conformable with the expectations of the population as well as with the policies recently elaborated at federal level.

Keywords

• Flash flood
• Inundation
• Natural risks
• Perception
• Management
• Brazil