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.
