Disasters, Impacts and Damage - Understand a little more!

Published on 02/11/2020

A typology is a classification, a grouping by types: species, patterns,  characteristics, forms, genera, classes, qualities, examples, models, etc.
In the case of the Brumadinho UFMG Project, a typology of impacts will be made, that is, a grouping by types of losses and damages that occurred due to the rupture of the Córrego do Feijão Mine Dam.
The various types of damage will be grouped into five categories that will serve to construct a typology of those affected:

  • Health and Education;
  • Economy;
  • Goods and Assets;
  • Access to Institutions and Services;

In the year 1999 the United Nations took the initiative to create the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNDRR. This office aims to bring together governments, communities and diverse partners so that a global strategy for reducing the risks and losses brought about by disasters can be discussed and implemented.

 

A decade later, in the year 2009, a document containing the basic terms on the subject of disaster reduction was published - Terminology: Basic terms of disaster risk reduction. The aim of this glossary was to make some terms easier to understand and use by all those who have an interest in this topic: the public (who generally suffer from disasters); public authorities (governments); and professionals who are somehow active in disaster risk reduction.

Human, environmental and material impacts and damage

Disasters bring about a range of damage: human, environmental, and material losses. But, what is defined as a disaster?

"Serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving human beings, materials, economic or environmental damage and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community to cope through its own resources" (UNISDR, 2009). 

Brumadinho Project UFMG

To size the impacts and measure the intensity of the damage the subproject 03 will conduct an assessment and characterization of the population affected by the disaster. The research will consider which elements (agents, processes and territorial transformations) affect and determine the damage suffered by the affected families and individuals. The following dimensions will be considered:

  • Socioeconomic condition (employment, income, assets, consumption, access to goods and services);
  • Environmental conditions (air quality, noise, vibration, access to and quality of water and soil);
  • Health status (physical, psychological illness, use of medications, excessive alcoholic beverages and psychotropic substances);
  • Education (both in performance and in restricting access and impacts on physical structure);
  • Urban and household structures (domicile, paving, sanitation, transportation, among others);
  • Impacts on tangible and intangible cultural heritage (use, access and participation in artistic-cultural manifestations and other works, historic, landscape and artistic buildings and sites, among others);
  • Basic services (availability, intensity, and use of health, education, transportation, cultural, tourism, leisure, and other services and facilities, whether public or private);
  • Livelihoods (informal, home-based, cooperative, shared, and other production for own or collective consumption);
  • Public safety;
  • Lifestyles of riparian populations (community coexistence, leisure, subsistence activities, cultural activities; in food and nutritional security etc.).

The various damage dimensions will be grouped into five categories that will serve to construct a typology of affected people:

  • Health and Education;
  • Economy;
  • Goods and Assets;
  • Access to Institutions and Services;
  • Access to Natural Resources and Ecosystem Services.

 

Follow the news about this research!

 

Back