Procedure of urban infrastructure flood damage estimation - Case study of Itajubá, Brazil

This article aims to present procedures to evaluate damages to urban infrastructure, based on data from some cities of the southwestern Brazilian Minas Gerais State. The proposed procedure was prepared based on interviews with technical staff and managers of infrastructure bodies. During the interview process, information was collected about damage caused by recurrent flooding events in the consulted municipalities. These data were confronted with documents provided by the administrative municipality’s body and Civil Defense staff. Database concerning the flooded area and soil use was obtained by hydraulic modeling and geo-processing techniques. The procedure was applied to the town of Itajuba, simulating floods with a 10, 50 or 100 years of return period. Direct damage to housing, commerce and services was obtained by depth-damage curves presented by Nascimento et al. (2007). The results showed infrastructure was responsible for 7% to 9% of the losses. The most affected system found was the road network, responsible for almost 54% of direct infrastructure damage, followed by the municipal solid waste management, accounting for about 24% of reconstruction expenses. The results were shown to be coherent and the procedure offers a good reference for damage analysis.