Land use and environmental impacts: Flood model in a medium-sized Brazilian city as a tool for urban sustainability

Abstract

Thinking, articulating, and promoting research focused on themes and issues inherent to urban spaces has posed challenges to various areas of science, particularly encouraging multidisciplinary research. Among the various studies on urban phenomena, those that reflect structural problems, whether of natural origin or resulting from human actions in space, stand out. Examples include recurrent flooding in various cities. In this regard, with the aim of correlating urban problems with the perspectives inherent to Urban Sustainability, this research aims to propose a flood model as a tool for thinking and planning space utilization. The method used consisted of creating a Flood Model, adopting an applied research approach and employing a multidisciplinary theoretical-methodological framework. This research was conducted using a medium-sized city, Montes Claros, in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Geotechnologies and Geographic Information System (GIS) were utilized in constructing the Flood Model. As conclusions, the results point towards new perspectives on the conception of Urban Policies and Planning, seeking to establish guidelines to achieve the sustainability of urban spaces and to prevent flooding disasters and risks based on the structured model in this study. Additionally, it underscored the need for oversight of installation works in subdivisions and public area paving to require the construction of an appropriate drainage system tailored to the local reality, as well as the regulation of subdivisions and occupations in floodplains of watercourses, primarily through technical, management, and policy approaches.