Challenges and perspectives of innovative digital

ecosystems designed to monitor and warn natural

disasters in Brazil
Luciana S. Soler
1
luciana.soler@cemaden.gov.br
Leandro T. Gregorio
1
leandro.torres@cemaden.gov.br
Paulo Leal
1
paulo.leal@cemaden.gov.br
Demerval Gonalves
1
demerval.goncalves@cemaden.gov.br
Luciana Londe
1
luciana.londe@cemaden.gov.br
rico Soriano
1
erico.soriano@cemaden.gov.br
Jarbas Cardoso
2
jarbas.cardoso@cti.gov.br
Marcos Coutinho
1
marcos.coutinho@cemaden.gov.br
Leonardo B.L. Santos
1
leonardo.santos@cemaden.gov.br
Silvia Saito
1
silvia.saito@cemaden.gov.br
1
Centro Nacional de Monitoramento de Desastres Naturais Cemaden
Rod.Presidente Dutra, Km 40 SP-RJ, CEP 12630-000, Cachoeira Paulista - SP, Brasil, + 55 12 31869236
2
Centro de Tecnologia da Informao Renato Archer- CTI
Rodovia D. Pedro I (SP - 65) Km 143,6, Amarais, CEP: 13069-901, Campinas SP, Brasil, + 55 19 37466000
ABSTRACT
The increasing figures of natural disasters and related human and
material losses represent a major challenge to be faced by the
Brazilian government, the scientific community and civil society
all together. Landslides and floods resulting from climatic
extremes have been associated not only to global climatic
changes, but mostly due to the increase of population
vulnerability and the lack of effective mitigation actions. Core
governmental responses to mitigate such losses include the
creation of operational centers for disaster monitoring and
management Cemaden (National Early Warning and Monitoring
Centre of Natural Disasters) and CENAD (Centro Nacional de
Gerenciamento de Riscos e Desastres). The establishment of these
institutions associated with investments to map risky areas are key
to implement landslides and floods monitoring systems. Despite
significant investments, the implementation of such natural
disaster monitoring systems depend much on cooperative actions
among organizations and entities from different sectors of the
society. The main objective of this work is to present the
challenges and perspectives of innovative digital ecosystems
designed to effectively monitor, warn and respond to natural
disasters related to landslides and floods in Brazil. The several
methodologies adopted make use of technical, scientific and
empirical knowledge to establish a rain gauge network of 1400
automatic pluviometers and 1100 semiautomatic pluviometers,
distributed in more than 800 municipalities defined as priority
ones by the Brazilian National Plan of Risk Management and
Response to Natural Disasters. Pilot projects of landslides
monitoring systems are also included in the methodology in key
municipalities where the number of human losses has been
significant in recent disasters. In order to develop such
challenging methodologies, Cemaden has worked together with
the Center for Information Technology Renato Archer (CTI),
CENAD, a number of research institutions, the private sector,
local and regional governments and non-governmental
organizations as well as the civil society. The combination of
different types of knowledge, technological approaches and levels
of interaction to population under risk of such a variety of
organizations shall configure a collective intelligence able to
improve the efficiency and confidence of early warnings of
landslides and floods, as well as to promote further commitment
of local governments and communities to respond to warnings.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.3.4 [Information storage and retrieval]: Systems and software
current awareness systems (selective dissemination of
information--SDI), information networks, performance evaluation
(efficiency and effectiveness), question-answering (fact retrieval),
user profiles and alerts systems.
K.4.1 [Computers and Society]: Public Policy Issues
computer-related health issues, human safety.
General Terms
Management, Measurement, Design, Reliability, Human Factors.
Keywords
Natural disasters; Brazil; landslide; flood; monitoring systems;
early warnings; remote sensors networks; cooperative entities;
collective intelligence.
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personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are
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requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.
MEDES13, October 29-31, 2013, Neumnster Abbey, Luxembourg.
Copyright 2013 ACM 978-1-4503-2004-7...$10.00.
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1. INTRODUCTION
Climatic extremes, population growth in urban areas and the lack
of effective mitigation actions have contributed to the increase of
population vulnerability to natural disasters in Brazil [1]. In recent
years, the increasing impacts on human and material losses related
to floods, landslides and droughts in Brazil have lead to the
establishment of specific public policies as well as the
engagement of the scientific community and the civil society as a
whole [2,3]. Core governmental responses to mitigate such losses
include the creation of operational centers for disaster monitoring
and management together with investments to map risky areas,
and to implement landslides and floods monitoring systems. The
challenge in implementing natural disaster monitoring systems is
to allow cooperative actions among organizations and entities
from different sectors of the society. Thus, in this paper we
discuss the core challenges and the current initiatives being
developed by Cemaden and its partners focused in the
construction of a digital ecosystem designed to monitor natural
disasters in Brazil. The core objective of this work is to present
the challenges and perspectives of innovative digital ecosystems
designed to effectively monitor, warn and respond to natural
disasters related to landslides and floods in Brazil.
2. THE BRAZILIAN CONTEXT
2.1 Natural disasters in Brazil
Natural disasters are likely to happen in many regions around the
world. Their frequency, intensity and severity vary according to
biophysical characteristics at the local scale as well as the level of
vulnerability of affected communities. According to official
figures, natural and anthropogenic disasters have been increasing
in Brazil due to poor risk perception from population and to
attention to unsatisfying security actions following economic and
technological development [4].
A general belief among Brazilians is that they live in a safe
country concerning natural disasters, which can be explained to
the very unlikely risk of catastrophic human and material losses
due to tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes and
similar phenomena. Nevertheless, despite the Brazilian territory
is not prone to most of the aforementioned disasters, year by year
the country has been more seriously affected by gradual floods,
flashfloods, landslides and droughts [5].
Natural disasters in Brazil are mainly related to extreme hydro-
meteorological conditions, which combined to the vulnerability of
human occupation in urban areas can result in population
adversities. According to the Brazilian Atlas of Natural Disasters
[6] during the period between 1991 and 2010, the phenomena that
caused more disasters in Brazil were in order of importance:
droughts, flash floods, gradual floods, storms, hail and landslides
(see Figure 1).
Regarding flash flood analysis, the South Brazil had the major
number of occurrences (2476 within the period considered),
followed by the Southeast region (2036), where the highest
population density in urban areas is found. Most likely because of
that the majority of victims are concentrated in the Southeast
region, especially in Rio de Janeiro State where the
geomorphologic characteristics associated to poverty, typify the
high vulnerability of several communities. In terms of number of
affected people, the difference between these regions is only 13%.
This fact points out that the severity of the processes and aspects
of occupation are especially related in Brazil.
The same database indicates that the Southeast region, mostly
Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro States, presented the highest
numbers of landslides, with 371 occurrences causing 500 deaths.
This leads to a preliminary conclusion that the South Brazil is the
second region most affected by landslides, but fortunately with no
victims. Nevertheless, the official statistics of landslide events in
Brazil are underestimated since in a number of cases, the main
cause of disasters is first related to floods. As a consequence, the
estimate of human losses, injured people or affected people in
general fail to reveal accurate figures.
Tominaga [1], based on [8] states that: According to EM-DAT,
Brazil is highly affected by floods, with 94 registered events from
1960 to 2008, causing 5720 deaths and more than 15 million
affected people. Concerning hydrological disasters, Brazil in
2008 was the 10th country showing the higher number of natural
disaster victims: 1,8 million of affected people.
Figure 1: Natural disasters documented in Brazil between 1991
and 2010. Source:[7]
Besides the climate triggering to most disasters in Brazil, they are
often related to environmental degradation, deforestation,
irregular land occupation with fragile constructions, and lack of
land use planning [5].
2.2 The conception of Cemaden
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states
that climatic extreme events driven by climate changes in
association with a greater number of people living in hazard areas
have been increasing the number of deaths and economic losses
around the world [3]. In Brazil, these estimates indicate prolonged
and intense droughts in the semi-arid region and a reduction of
precipitation in Amazon region and in the Brazilian Cerrado. At
the same time, the prediction of other extreme events, such as
severe storms and floods, is a sign of upcoming destructive
episodes that can result in many casualties in vulnerable areas
throughout the country.
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Reducing exposure and vulnerability of people is a strategic
action to prevent disaster losses. This can be achieved by
associating structural and nonstructural actions. Early warning
systems comprise an important tool to prepare population,
especially those who live in risk areas, once warning systems can
increase the response capacity of population under risk.
Therefore, aiming to prevent socioeconomic, environmental and
human losses, the Brazilian government established in 2011 the
National Early Warning and Monitoring Centre of Natural
Disasters (Cemaden), which started its operational activities in
December of the same year. The conception of Cemaden was an
immediate response from the Brazilian Presidency to the worst
natural disaster ever registered in the country in January 2011. At
the time, severe landslides and flashfloods caused the death of
about 900 people in a mountainous region in Rio de Janeiro State.
Cemaden carries out a number of operational routines supported
by applied research and development.
The operational routines are focused on warnings of landslides
and floods related to geodynamical and hydro meteorological
processes in areas where peoples vulnerability has been assessed.
An integrated analysis of rainfall, susceptibility to landslides and
floods, land occupation and past events of disasters, Cemadens
geoscientists team investigates how the sediment processes to
blame for disasters may occur in the municipalities with mapped
risk areas (i.e. municipalities where natural disasters surveillance
is performed). Geoscientists also investigate what are the
characteristics that trigger these processes. Until the present, the
operational team monitors a total of 341 municipalities within
them 292 are under the risk of landslides and 248 are under risk of
floods. Regarding the geodynamic risk, the total area affected is
about 118 thousands hectares, while areas likely to be affected by
floods is still unknown, but are estimated to be much larger than
in the geodynamic cases. By 2015 Cemadens goal is to monitor a
total of 821 municipalities in all regions of Brazil (see Figure 4).
In tandem to monitor and warn to risk of landslides and floods,
Cemadens research team investigates the state-of-art in the core
sciences: meteorology, hydrology, geosciences and natural
disasters. A special emphasis is given on prediction, preparedness,
prevention and mitigation of impacts in urban and rural
watersheds, under the concern to incorporate research outcomes
to the current operational activities. Beyond that, Cemaden also
carries out socio educational projects aimed to promote risk
perception and prevent deaths among local communities living in
risk areas. An important project in this subject provides
semiautomatic rain gauges to be distributed to entities located in
landslides risk areas (this project is discussed in section 3).
Cemaden ensembles a collective knowledge on natural disasters
by combining its multidisciplinary team of professionals to the
availability of a rich data network provided from different
institutions; to mention some: the National Institute for Space
Research (INPE), the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET),
the National Water Agency (ANA), the Geological Survey of
Brazil (CPRM) among several others national and regional
institutions. The geo-referenced integration of such data network
that includes topographical, geologic, geotechnical, hydrologic,
meteorological, socioeconomic and demographic information is
provided by a powerful web-based tool constantly improved by
Cemadens team named SALVAR. This web-based tool facilitates
forecast on hydrologic and geodynamic risks, this is because it
combines in a single and unique environment near real-time data
of rain and water level of rivers at local scale.
2.3 State-of-art in monitoring natural
disasters in Brazil the SALVAR web-tool
Computing resources are fundamental to monitor natural
disasters. Two main concerns on this subject are: 1) how to
represent big data of meteorological, hydrological and
geotechnical measurements in spatial variables following
standards of object-relational models that allow the decision for
early warnings [8]; 2) how to retrieve and mine a large amount of
data from a number of sources (usually not uniform) in a common
computational environment friendly to decision makers of
different backgrounds. A computational system able to attend
these requirements must deal with vector files (points, lines and
polygons), raster files, remote sensing satellite images and other
data types, following interoperability standards such as the Open
Geospatial Consortium (OGC). These standards such as WMS
(Web Map Service Interface Standard) provide an interface to
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), enabling the delivery of
geotagged images in formats like jpeg, png or gif [9,10].
The platform named SALVAR (Sistema de Alerta e Visualizao
de reas de Risco Alert and Visualization System of Areas
Under Risk) is a web-based computational system developed at
Cemaden to monitor natural disasters. The SALVAR offers to
experts a Web Geographic Information System, using as map
server the GeoServer a reference implementation of OGC
standards for Web Feature Service (WFS) and Web Map Service
(WMS). The web client adopts JavaScript as the programming
language to manipulate images and geographic information
provided by the map server. In order to facilitate, we adopted the
free library OpenLayers designed in Javascript to implement an
API to build sophisticated web geographical interfaces, which are
similar to systems such as Google Maps [11,12].
3. CHALLENGES AND PERSPECTIVES
3.1 Overtaking challenges
3.1.1 Improving data acquisition network
The need to improve data acquisition to monitor natural disasters
is critical especially in near real-time geotechnical/geologic data,
but also on pluviometric and hydrologic data. Despite a
considerable number of automatic and semiautomatic
pluviometers and fluviometers mostly provided by INMET and
ANA, the existing rain data network is insufficient to provide
enough information to monitor and prevent deaths due to
landslides and floods in 821 municipalities defined as priority
ones in the Brazilian National Plan of Risk Management and
Response to Natural Disasters, implemented in 2012. Thus, in
order to improve these networks Cemaden is carrying on two
projects aimed to install rain gauges in risk areas.
The first project named Pluviometers in the Communities has been
promoted to develop the risk perception to improve the local
capacities to face natural disasters. The strategic action was the
acquision of 1100 semiautomatic pluviometers to be installed in
key points to monitor disasters. The community is then
responsible to watch over the equipment, read and report the
recorded data to Cemaden and to civil defenses, mainly during the
rainy season. The data retrieved from semiautomatic pluviometers
will be available in an open website allowing free access to the
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public. The network data will be built with the help of and also
shared with the entities belonging to municipalities with
landslides and flooding risk areas monitored by Cemaden.
The second project of rain gauges installation is named Automatic
Pluviometers, whose goal is to install 1400 automatic
pluviometers in risk areas of landslides and/or floods, already
mapped in more than 350 Brazilian municipalities where existing
network is scarce. Not only this project aims to support
Cemadens early warnings, but also to make available near-real
time rain data to Cemadens partners engaged in monitoring
natural disasters.
Regarding the monitoring of mass movements (landslides),
Cemaden is carrying on a project to build a Geological-
Geotechnical Monitoring System in nine pilot areas that are
representative in terms of: 1) types and processes of landslides,
2) Brazilian geological compartments; 3) the occurrence of
significant human and material losses related to sediment
disasters. The results obtained in the pilot implementations will
serve as a basis to evaluate and adjust the methodologies,
techniques and practices in order to get an effective Geological-
Geotechnical Monitoring System (GGMS) that can be used on a
national scale.
Similar projects had been carried in Brazil and in the world under
scientific purposes, but rare experiences can be found focused on
operational purposes, such as the one Cemaden has worked on.
This project is based on the monitoring systems described in [13],
where the authors explain a near real-time monitoring system
based on sensors / instrumentation (laser diastimeters, seismic
detectors, pressure sensors and rain gauges) selected according to
the soil mass characteristics and located where the first motion
signals are expected to occur. The alert procedure is activated
when the measurements of the sensors seismic vibrations or slide
movements register values that exceed the established limits.
According to the authors, this experimental system represents an
effective tool for transmitting local and remote alerts, enabling
immediate activation of emergency procedures. A conceptual
model is presented in section 3.2.1.
3.1.2 Challenges in data integration and calibration
The focus in the data integration step is to provide information
gathered from the distinct projects in a standardized manner that
facilitates the insertion into SALVAR web-based tool. The
integration of data received by automatic pluviometers is already
implemented into SALVAR, where the insertion of data will take
place in tandem to new installations of pluviometers.
Taking into account the Geological-Geotechnical Monitoring
System, the main challenges to be faced are: 1) the integration of
data from different sources and formats; 2) the development and
calibration of methods that consider the wide variety of
parameters that could potentially influence the disaster; 3) the lack
of available information in areas to be monitored; 4) the gathering
of threshold values to involved parameters and their correlation
with different risk scenarios and alert levels; 5) the security
conditions in risk areas to shelter the equipment.
3.1.3 Collective intelligence
The Research Group on Natural Disasters of Cemaden has leaded
the main fronts: 1) Studies on land use and vulnerability; 2)
Analysis of improvements in governmental responses to disasters;
3) Modeled vulnerability and risk scenarios as well as impact
assessment to support alerts.
Considering the Brazilian scenario of disaster prevention, it is
important to promote integration between civil defense and the
technical and scientific communities. All these actors have
accumulated knowledge that can be better organized, contributing
to the effectiveness of prevention of natural disasters. The
interaction between the various actors involved in the theme of
natural disasters (institutions, professionals, stakeholders, research
groups, communities in risk areas etc.) is complex, requiring
specific tools to help in the integration process, processing and
circulation of knowledge.
Among the operational activities of monitoring and sending
warnings to the civil defense, there is a growing need to improve
the knowledge about the characteristics of susceptibility of risk
areas, the vulnerability of communities and the rain thresholds
adapted to local realities. Therefore, it is core issue the
development of new tools to deal with collective intelligence
throughout a shared digital ecosystem among research centers,
monitoring institutions and the population. This can be achieved
by joining two concepts: Collective Intelligence (CI) and
Knowledge Management (KM). The premise of KM and CI is the
collective performance that exceeds the sum of individual
performances. Collective intelligence can be understood as the
ability of organizations and communities together ask questions
and search for answers. Knowledge management simply, is the act
of capitalization and sharing knowledge, where "capitalize" means
making knowledge explicit and available to the organization and
community [14,15].
3.2 Perspectives
3.2.1 GGMS Conceptual model
According to [16] designing an Early Warning System (EWS) is a
complex task. Many factors such as spatial-temporal scale, type of
landslide, risk scenarios, available resources among others must
be considered, as well as the need for a simple and flexible
toolbox based on graphic methods match end-users to the most
suitable EWS (Figure 2). Landslides monitoring system must be
designed keeping in mind the following requirements [13]:
Quick and simple installation;
Does not require specific investigations;
Ability to record continuous data.
Intrieri and coleagues [16] subdivide a generic EWS in four
fundamental components to mention: design, monitoring,
forecasting and education, which are illustrated in Figure 3. In
addition, the authors stress that the key tasks in the design phase
of a landslide EWS are:
Determining the needs and vulnerabilities of the
population at risk;
Identifying any impediments to the population taking
action if a warning is issued;
Characterizing the geologic and meteorological setting
and conditions that lead to landslide initiation (geo-
indicators).
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Figure 2: Warning and alert system for landslide area
management. Source:[13]
Figure 3: Subdivision of a generic EWS in four fundamental
components. Source:[16]
According to the authors, excessively high thresholds (of any
type, for example a movement velocity or a rainfall intensity and
duration thresholds) may lead to a difficult situation in terms of
short time to take the necessary Civil Defense measures.
Conversely, a threshold that is too conservative may lead to false
alarms and to all the related problems.
The Safeland Consortium [17] presents the case of Safeland, a
large-scale integrating collaborative research European project in
which the conception and implementation of a EWS was divided
into eight areas of work:
1. Focuses on improving the knowledge on triggering
mechanisms, processes and thresholds, including climate-related
and anthropogenic triggers, and on run-out models in landslide
hazard assessment;
2. Harmonizes quantitative risk assessment methodologies for
different spatial scales, looking into uncertainties, vulnerability,
landslide susceptibility, landslide frequency, and identifying
hotspots in Europe with higher landslide hazard and risk;
3. Focused on future climate change scenarios and changes in
demography and infrastructure, resulting in the evolution of
hazard and risk in Europe at selected hotspots;
4. Addresses the technical and practical issues related to
monitoring and early warning for landslides, and identifies the
best technologies available in both the context of hazard
assessment and design of early warning systems;
5. Provides a toolbox of risk mitigation strategies and guidelines
for choosing the most appropriate risk management strategy.
6. Case studies for verification / calibration of models and
scenarios;
7. Dissemination of projects results;
8. Project management and coordination.
3.2.2 Collective intelligence and data integration
It is aimed to develop an online platform of knowledge
management able to enhance communications between the actors
involved in the issue disasters. This platform is intended to enable
integration between researchers, practitioners and communities by
improving communication, facilitating work groups, sharing data
and local information, organizing and producing knowledge, and
most of all allowing the engagement of communities in preventing
disasters. The platform will help to prioritize research demands to
meet the urgent needs to reduce disaster (knowledge
management). It will include services based on participative
knowledge of community living in risk areas, with is expected to
contribute significantly in the operational activities of Cemaden.
Contributions expected by the implementation of this platform
are: 1) rapid production and dissemination of information;
2) innovative knowledge on natural disasters; 3) establishment of
an active community participation in disaster prevention and
preparedness (also supported by the installation of semiautomatic
pluviometers); 4) increase awareness in communities about
disaster prevention and the importance of the role of the
community in this process; 5) increase synergy and creation of a
common agenda among stakeholders engaged in preventing and
mitigating natural disasters; 6) improvement in training
professionals and researchers related to the topic of natural
disasters and climate change; 7) improve efficiency and efficacy
of early warnings of natural disasters issued by Cemaden; 8) help
reducing human, socioeconomic and environmental impacts
caused by natural disasters in Brazil.
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Specific services of the platform will be:
Researcher-Community: This application aims to
establishing direct communication channels between
researchers and the community no matter it is located in
a hazardous area;
Meteorologist-Community: This application will allow
closer interactions between the communities and the
operational activities of Cemaden through the adoption
of popular rain gauges (built from PET bottles, for
example) whose records of rainfall can be
communicated by the community to local
meteorological services and to Cemaden through the
platform. These data will also be available on the web to
the public access.
4. DISCUSSION
4.1 Successful partnerships in data networks
The project Automatic Pluviometers has an integrative
institutional aspect in the step of identifying optimal places to
install automatic pluviometers. Using geo-information techniques,
the methodology included a deficit analysis to estimate the needed
number of pluviometers per municipality. These estimates were
used in a cooperative action between Cemaden and institutions at
state and municipality levels, especially municipality governments
and their civil defenses.
The number of automatic rain gauges initially estimated for each
municipality took into account the distribution of the risk areas
already mapped in 363 municipalities (Figure 4), the existing
automatic pluviometric networks and the total number of rain
gauges available for installation (1400). Even taking into account
the existing network of rain gauges in the deficit analysis, the
selection of optimal sites attempted to keep a duplication of rain
gauges, especially in areas where the number of people under risk
is high and the existing pluviometric network is unique. However,
this procedure was limited by the number of rain gauges available
in the project as well as by the location of potential sites identified
as suitable for installation.
A number of technical meetings and fieldwork training were done
in 14 from the 27 Brazilian Federal Units in several municipalities
to promote both projects the Automatic Pluviometers and the
Pluviometers in the Communities. An important result of the
meetings and fieldwork campaigns was the possibility to approach
Cemadens initiative project to specific monitoring needs
identified by municipalities and State representatives, taking into
account local issues and set-backs. The optimal places selected are
currently being confirmed to the responsible institutions through
the web database that gained a status of a GIS web database.
Details on the GIS-based methodology to find optimal places can
be found in [18]. Even though we have reached the required
number of optimal places in August 2013, new potential sites are
still being filled in the web database for future installations.
Cemaden developed two dedicated web databases one for each of
the aforementioned projects. In the case of automatic
pluviometers the institutions representatives were able to supply
detailed information of suitable sites to install pluviometers inside
or nearby risk areas, based on their empirical knowledge of local
characteristics. The results in the Automatic Pluviometers project
are very positive as more than 1800 locations have been filled
since March 2013, and around 600 were chosen as optimal
installation sites using spatial analysis. The additional required
addresses were obtained by governmental partnerships with the
Brazilian National Bank, the Brazilian Post and private companies
of mobile telephone services.
Figure 4: The 821 municipalities considered as priority to natural
disaster monitoring and mitigation by Federal Government and
the 363 municipalities with available risk mapping where 1400
pluviometers are being installed.
In the case of semiautomatic pluviometers only public or non-
governmental organization engaged in preventing and mitigating
natural disasters were allowed to require equipments. The
semiautomatic pluviometers are donated to the municipality that
receives training and orientation by Cemadens team in the field
in order to operate the equipments and report data to the local
civil defense. Until the present, a total of 508 entities are
registered to receive semiautomatic pluviometers, among which
274 are located in municipalities with risk areas of landslides.
4.2 Facing the challenges
In order to mitigate the challenges identified in the
implementation of a Geological-Geotechnical Monitoring System,
the project strategy was developed around seven themes:
Instrumentation: Purchase and installation of monitoring
instruments (total stations, humidity sensors and strain
extensometers);
Geological-geotechnical-geomorphologic
characterization: Characterization of the areas to be
instrumented in the geological, geotechnical and
geomorphologic aspects, aiming to obtain the most
representative locations to perform the instrumentation
and process characterization of mass movements
disasters;
Modeling: Evaluation of models used to simulate the
geodynamic processes and perform the needed
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adaptations to the Brazilian scenario and modeling
itself;
Past vs. present events: Survey past records of
landslides processes in the nine pilot areas in order to
cities studied;
Thresholds: Develop studies to find cumulative
precipitation values associated to landslide processes
occurred in the past, as well as other parameters
(deformation speed, accumulated deformation,
humidity, etc.);
Interpretation: Assistance and training to interpret the
data retrieved and calibration parameters;
Integration: Develop a strategy to implement of a digital
platform able to integrate data and added value products
into SALVAR web-based tool.
The GGMS project is currently in the process of hiring services
and acquiring equipment. The equipment to be installed in the
nine pilot areas will consist of nine sets of monitoring total
stations (i.e. each set has 100 prisms monitoring), 90 soil
humidity sensors and about 30 extensometers.
The selection of sites to place the equipments, as well as the
support to implement the pilot sites will be done by Cemaden
together with the local civil defenses of the selected
municipalities, with whom there is a strong partnership
established. Experts from local universities will also play their
role in the development and implementation of a monitoring
project for each location, and also to help the interpretation of
collected data in order to build risk scenarios. The perspectives
for partnerships under the Geological-Geotechnical Monitoring
Project are wide, especially on the issues related to the
development of a computerized tool that allows to integrate data,
models, methods and trigger parameters applied in the geological
and geotechnical monitoring.
Another important challenge is to mobilize the collective
intelligence by exploring the inter-relationships among members
of communities as well as by managing knowledge and specific
information gathered by stakeholders (scientists, technicians,
citizens, among others) [14,15]. Information Technology will
contribute to gradually materialize the collective intelligence by
intellectual collaboration of stakeholders in the construction of
collective task of problem solving. In the specific case of
Cemaden, such collective intelligence is expected to provide
further anticipation of warnings of natural disasters.
5. SUMMARY
The proposed semiautomatic and automatic pluviometric
networks already being installed by Cemaden brings important
innovation, since there is no national network specifically
designed for monitoring natural disasters able to support early
warning systems in Brazil. Besides, the semiautomatic
pluviometers network consists of the first successful action to
mobilize a collective intelligence to prevent and mitigate natural
disasters. Although in the initial stages of installation processes,
we expect a significant improvement on the efficiency and
confidence of early warnings of landslides and floods already in
the next rainy season in the Southeast where risk areas are
concentrated. The engagement of public, non-governmental and
also some private entities in the projects had been massive, which
already reflects a relevant commitment of local governments and
communities to respond to warnings.
The results so far and the challenges listed in section 4.2 come
together as embryonic actions to achieve our final goal to develop
an innovative digital ecosystem designed to be effective in
monitoring, warning and responding to natural disasters related to
landslides and floods in Brazil. Although there is still a long way
to reach this objective, when summarizing the results so far: the
established partnerships (and the ones to come), the expertise
involved, the governmental, private and communities
engagements, the general conclusion is that we are in right track.
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