The collaboration of the quantiles technique to the identification of extreme rainfall and an approach to detect natural disaster situations in the semi-arid region of Ceará

Abstract

Natural disasters caused by droughts have caused different impacts in many places of northeastern Brazil. In Ceará State, this phenomenon occurs frequently in areas influenced by the semi-arid climate, characterized by high temperatures and irregular rain season during all the year. The purpose of this article was to analyze the behavior of rainfall in the backwoods region of Ceará through a statistical technique (quantiles) that allows identifying a particular weather event in a semiarid region as normal or extreme and propose an operational definition of natural disaster that permit a better guidance for prevention and disaster responses. To look on these objectives, information consultations were realized in qualified parts related to the topic, bibliographic reviews of concepts such as disaster threat, risk and vulnerability, use of methodologies present in the database and the statistical technique of quantiles allowing behavior analysis rain in the region. The geographical description revealed with reasonable clarity the operating semi-arid of the region and the numerous emergency decrees are certainly strong evidence that the Ceará countryside reside people with the most high social vulnerability and that present difficulties to recover a natural disaster.