Geostatistical strategy to build Spatial Coastal-Flooding Models

Abstract The intensification of flooding events in urban coastal areas and the management of the extremely vulnerable ecosystems has become a global issue and has been the subject of several studies in recent decades. The combination of statistical modelling techniques and geospatial analysis has gained prominence in integrated management of natural hazards. Combined approach represents a promising strategy to reduce complexity, providing a holistic representation of the system. However, for applying planning and risk management alternatives in urban space of coastal areas, the causal relationships between environmental and anthropogenic factors distribution and the flooding sites have to be well clarified. This article aimed to propose a new strategy to build Spatial Coastal-Flooding Models based on records of flooding points occurred and environmental and anthropogenic characteristics of the area. The strategy was designed to combine simple but robust statistical techniques and relate geospatially data obtained from free and easily accessible online databases. The geostatistical strategy was applied in a coastal city of Brazil, where high environmental vulnerability and constantly flooding are observed. The strategy finds that the relationships between environmental and anthropogenic variables and flooding events are not homogeneous over space. The results indicate that the strategy can be easily replicable and refined through the inclusion of other factors of influence, obtaining good precision in the representation and explanation of the flooding events in coastal areas. In general, the strategy provides information that can support decision-making by government agencies in relation to integrated urban planning and mitigation of flooding risk coastal areas.