Delimitation of Flood Areas with HAND Algorithm in the Camanducaia River Watershed, São Paulo, Brazil

Departamento de Geografia, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

Abstract: The planning and management of water resources, calls for a discussion of the environmental, physical and technological sciences as well as public policies and social issues. Therefore, the management of water resources is exercised in order to have a working environment or to do the same, minimizing the frequency of adverse effects of extreme events as a flood. Likewise, it aims to minimize the frequency of adverse effects resulting from extreme occurrence such as flooding. To do so, it is necessary to map studies of susceptible areas to such event since, taking into account that the numerical modeling stands out as a tool in order to understand the hydrological processes. The Height Above the Nearest Drainage (HAND), a quantitative topographic algorithm, presents itself as a simplified conceptual model, used as a predictive way to delimit flood areas in river basins and is an alternative in the absence of detailed hydrological data for management. The objective of this work is to define more accurately the areas susceptible to flooding from the correlation between the algorithms that determine the HAND model and the surface slope plus the soil map, having as area of study the river basin Camanducaia, located in the state of Sao Paulo. It was found that by inserting in the delimitation of the susceptibility classes data referring to slope and soil map, the definition of the classes of susceptibility to flooding gains greater precision.