Understanding urban risk perception and enigma of peoples' memory through social-hydrology observatories of water security under global changes
Abstract
In Brazilian biomes, human exposure to hydrological extremes such as floods and droughts face risks derived from a crescent growth of peoples' vulnerability. Usually, Brazilian water systems are threatened by frequent and acute water hazards intensified by poor planning conditions and extreme social vulnerability. Thus, our contribution addresses the risk perception and adaptation strategies on water security to changing conditions for some of the most vulnerable communities in Brazil. We also addresses how the key issues central to humanitarian goals, identified in Brazilian context also have strong similarities with other world's catchments. Our hypothesis understands patterns, paradoxes and feedbacks from public perception and their inherent variability related to global changes focused on water disaster risks. This contribution revisits the concepts from socio-hydrology and humanitarian hand-on practices with the help of Civil Defense agents in demonstrative pilot projects, through a mix of local methods and action strategies. To develop a robust methodology on one hand we have integrated archival historic database of hydrological urban hazards (Mendes & Mendiondo, 2007), human-sensing risk perception (Giuntoli, 2008), geo-social tools for predicting urban floods (Restrepo-Estrada et al, 2018), and hydrologic models including anthropogenic effects by volunteer-geographic information (Fava et al, 2018). On the other hand, we propose a dynamic interaction of risk communication with feedbacks between hydrological processes and social drivers. This incorporation allows in embedding the local communities' knowledge and their independent response towards challenges surrounding water security. This is proposed by appending peoples' memory into the participatory methodology of Socio-Hydrological Observatory of Water Security' SHOWS (de Souza et al, 2018), ecosystem-based adaptation scenarios to climate services (Taffarello et al, 2017) and water securitization (Mohor & Mendiondo, 2017). A set of emerging questions and social knowledge are elicited with a developing notion of sociohydrology to envision the perception of communities through their memories, interventions and adaptive practices.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFM.H54C..05M
- Keywords:
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- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1803 Anthropogenic effects;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 1880 Water management;
- HYDROLOGYDE: 4303 Hydrological;
- NATURAL HAZARDS