Flooding in the city of Belém-PA, Brazil: causes and mitigation measures

Abstract

The city of Belém is located in Pará State, northern Brazil, in the continent of South America. This municipality is located in the great delta of the Amazon River, more precisely at the mouth of the bay from Rio Guamá Guajará, and is divided into several basins. Geomorphologically, it is a floodplain whose level is 4 feet lower than the river level, suffering the influence of high tides and having difficulty in disposing the rainwater. Against the background of considerable human and material losses, priority is the development of tools for assessing the vulnerability of flooding in the region that will assist in the planning. The main objectives are to study the municipality in respect to occurrences of past and current flooding so as to predict the future floods. This will help to organize the alert systems and adapt them into the Brazilian law.