Simulações de crescimento urbano em planícies de inundação nas cidades de fronteira entre Brasil e Uruguai.

Abstract

The horizontal urban growth process requires the modification of the natural environment to support urban activities since the city, when expanding, encompasses the environment by urbanizing it. The urbanization process, in its turn, has the feature of ignoring natural watercourses and depending on the intensity of urbanization, it can eliminate drainage lines, consequently interfering with natural dynamics. At the same time, cities located near to large water courses, such as rivers, can be affected by natural hydrological events, such as floods. This is the case of neighboring cities on the border between Brazil and Uruguay: Jaguarão (BR) - Rio Branco (UY), Quaraí (BR) - Artigas (UY) and Barra do Quaraí (BR) - Bella Unión (UY), cities that had their original nucleus implanted in high zones, but as they expanded - in their urban growth processes - have occupied areas located in floodplains. These cities are classified with a high degree of vulnerability to flooding, being periodically affected by them. Based on this, the work proposed to simulate the urban expansion of the cities mentioned by relating them to the flood zones, in order to identify how the urban growth process takes place on the floodplains. To perform the proposed future urban growth simulations, computer simulation resources were used through urban modeling with cellular automata. For a future time of 40 years, if not considered the prohibition of the occupation on the floodplains, the results indicate that Jaguarão (BR) e Rio Branco (UY) may have 30% of their urban growth on these areas, Quaraí (BR) e Artigas (UY), 70% and Barra do Quaraí (BR) e Bella Unión (UY), 14%. Furthermore, Jaguarão / Rio Branco and Quaraí / Artigas show a concentric growth trend, while Barra do Quaraí and Bella Unión show a tendency for linear growth.