Avaliação integrada de intervenções em drenagem urbana em assentamentos precários: o caso da Bacia da Ramadinha em Campina Grande/PB.

Abstract

The urbanization process, besides being a positive symptom of a country's development, has been one of the drivers of urban segregation, with the migration of the urban poor to areas with precarious and risky conditions. Through federal programs such as the Growth Acceleration Program - Urbanization of Precarious Settlements (PAC-UAP), precarious settlements and slums started to be seen as areas to be inserted in the urban fabric, and not eradicated from the cities, by means of urban infrastructure interventions, such as basic sanitation. This work presents an integrated assessment of urban drainage interventions held in the Ramadinha catchment, located in the city of Campina Grande, Paraíba, Brazil. The aim of the assessment was to verify the adequacy and support capacity of the drainage network for rainfall events with return periods of 10, 25 and 100 years and, at the same time, investigate the impacts of the intervention from the social and technical perception of residents and of the technical team involved in the project. The methodology integrated hydraulic and hydrological modeling carried out through the HEC-HMS (Hydrologic Engineering Center’s Hydrologic Modeling System) and HEC-RAS (Hydrologic Engineering Center’s River Analysis System) models, and information from interviews. Although the Ramadinha canal has the hydraulic capacity to support the extreme events, we cannot assume this to be the only indicator of the appropriateness of the intervention. The social and technical perceptions revealed that the improvements resulting from upgrading occurred in a heterogeneous way, and problems such unhealthy conditions and flooding, which motivated the intervention works, still persist in poor areas of the community. The assessment emphasizes the importance of a holistic view, not only in the post-intervention evaluation but during all stages of the project, in order to maximize their results and welfare improvements, heavily involving the population's in the process.