Flood-damage curves: Methodological development for the Brazilian context

The present paper describes the main results of an on-going research aiming to develop standard flood damage data in the form of generic flood-damage curves. This type of curve allows estimating flood damages from the depth of inundation. Although the research project encompasses flood damages on different urban land use activities (residential, commercial, services and industrial land uses), the paper focus on residential flood damage information. The empirical data used on this research was obtained from systematic surveys performed in the city of Itajubá, a town with 85.000 inhabitants located in the Sapucaí river valley in the South-eastern region of Brazil, during the year of 2002. The survey consisted in interviewing residents in the Itajubá flood prone urban area in order to develop a data base characterizing the social class, the building fabric, the contents (inventory items) and the damages caused to dwellings by a reference flood event, the 2000 flood event. During this event, the town had more than 70% of its urban area flooded for three days and, in some densely urbanised areas, the depth of water was superior to three meters. The FDC curves obtained show relatively high damage according to the submersion depth considering the Brazilian context. This issue suggests that inhabitants can rarely recover, in the short time, from all the harm caused by flooding.