Diagnóstico intraurbano da salubridade ambiental baseado em indicadores: o caso de Aracaju, Sergipe.

Abstract

In most of Brazilian cities, the urban growing process has occurred due to a disconnection between urban expansion and the presence of environmental attributes. The combination of natural and transformed environments, in the absence of planning, can have a series of negative impacts on natural systems and the population. In this sense, there is environmental sanitation as the set of measures that aims to preserve or modify the environment conditions in order to promote health and life quality for the population. The lack of adequate sanitation conditions makes the environment unhealthy. This study aims to perform an intra-urban diagnosis of access to basic sanitation services as well as socioeconomic conditions in the city of Aracaju, Sergipe, and their relationship with urban occupation processes from the perspective of urban environmental health. Specifically, it proposes to evaluate urban environmental health from the adaptation of the Environmental Health Indicator - EHI, due to its effectiveness as a tool for assessing environmental, social and health conditions of the population. This study evaluates data about the aspects of water supply, sewage, solid waste, water resources, urban drainage and socioeconomic aspects, for which individual indicators and their combination, called EHI/AJU. The results allowed the classification of the census sectors in levels of low, moderate and high environmental health. The results identified the peripheral areas from Aracaju as the regions with the greatest disability, emphasising the northern and southern borders. Urban drainage and socioeconomic factors were the main deficiencies in the municipality. ISA/AJU can be applied as a decision support tool in defining priorities for the implementation of sanitation measures aiming to comply with the demands of different areas of the city. Therefore, the Environmental Health Indicator for Aracaju can contribute to the construction of public policies that consider an articulation between urban development and the maintenance of environmental quality and social wellbeing.