Potential Flood-Related Daily Urban Mobility problems in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)

Abstract

Unplanned urban expansion merges mobility and flood problems, creating a new challenge to be faced by big cities stakeholders. It is known that transport and mobility activities cause impacts on urban environment. Nevertheless, natural phenomena may also cause impacts on urban mobility. The estimate of the flow of people among traffic regions, together with hydrographic information, support the computation of people affected during flood episodes. Rio de Janeiro State registers the highest urbanization rate in Brazil. Based on origin and destination data, a Google Maps based script was developed to get each travel path. All regions intercepted by local rivers were considered to compute the amount of people directly affected in their mobility. The total number of indirectly affected people is calculated through the routes that intersect each river. The results suggest that Pavuna and Guandu Mirim Rivers should be highly considered by stakeholders to mitigate flood effects on urban mobility in the MRRJ.