Contributions of GIDES Project for Sediment Disaster Early Warnings in Brazil

The rapid growth of urban areas and their inadequate expansion on slopes and flood plains made sediment disasters more frequent in Brazil. After the succession of disasters that caused major damage between 2008 and 2011, the Brazilian government reformulated its strategy and policies related to disaster risk management. Within this strategy, the Brazilian government has proposed a cooperation agreement with the Government of Japan, resulting in GIDES Project, which has as its main objective the strengthening of the national strategy for natural disaster risk management. Regarding actions related to the monitoring and early warning of sediment disasters, three Brazilian Municipalities were chosen as Pilot Implementations for GIDES, aiming to allow the discussion of new methodologies, adapting content and language of the alerts, the establishment of shared and unified information flows and records, and the establishment of common protocols, in experimental scale. This article aims to draw the major aspects in Brazilian risk management context, outline the main challenges faced so far and the Project's contribution perspectives for the improvement of sediment disaster risk management in Brazil, especially on issues related to monitoring and early warning.