Environmental disasters in Northeast Brazil: Hydrometeorological, social, and sanitary factors

Abstract

The occurrence of environmental disasters affects different social segments, impacting health, education, housing, economy, and the provision of basic services. Thus, the objective of this study was to estimate the relationship between the occurrence of disasters and extreme climate, sociosanitary, and demographic conditions in the Northeast region of Brazil (NEB) during the period from 1993 to 2013. Initially, we analyzed the spatial pattern of the incidence of events; subsequently, generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape were used to identify and estimate the magnitude of associations between factors. Results showed that droughts are the predominant disasters in NEB representing 81.1% of the cases, followed by events triggered by excessive rainfall such as flash floods (11.1%) and floods (7.8%). Climate conditions presented statistically significant associations with the analyzed disasters, in which indicators of excess rainfall positively contributed to the occurrence of flash floods and floods but negatively contributed to the occurrence of drought. Sociosanitary factors, such as percentage of households with inadequate sewage, waste collection, and water supply, were also positively associated with the model’s estimations, that is, contributing to an increase in the occurrence of events, with the exception of floods, which were not significantly influenced by sociosanitary parameters.Adecrease of 19% in the risk of drought occurrence was estimated, on average.On the other hand, events caused by excessive rainfall increased by 40% and 57%, in the cases of flash floods and floods, respectively.