Monitoring stations provide real-time data on natural disasters in Brazil

There are 23,600 river monitoring stations in Brazil, at the moment 15% of these stations send data in real time, however, sometimes, the lack of cellular network coverage ends up creating difficulties in sending this information, according to Cemaden (National Center for Monitoring and Alerting of Natural Disasters). The stations are divided into those that measure the rain that falls in the river, called pluviometric, and those that measure the level and flow of rivers, called fluviometric.

_{Monitoring station installed on the Manoel Alves River (Photo: reproduction/Fernando Alves/Secretary of the Environment/G1)}

Importance

Before Civil Defense warns the population about flood risks, experts need to make forecasts of weather events. One of the necessary bases for this forecast to be made is the data sent by monitoring stations that are located along rivers and Brazilian basins.

Problems

According to experts, Brazil is facing two challenges: network coverage is still not ideal, that is, it is insufficient, and consequently creates difficulty in accessing information sent by stations, the engineer responsible for Cemaden's hydrological monitoring, Leandro Casagrande , stated that a network to provide this data online is necessary to predict warnings in Brazil, such as floods and river overflows.

One of the main natural disasters in Brazil is floods. In 2023, 3,425 alerts were issued by Cemaden, more than half of which were floods, such as river overflows.

The National Water Agency (ANA), which is responsible for coordinating 23,663 information collection points on rainfall and river levels, states that it is undergoing a budget reduction, for this year, 71.5 million would have been approved by Congress of reais for the agency's budget, but, at the beginning of 2024, the value fell to 58.8 million reais.

Featured Photo: Hydrological station in Jundiaí (Reproduction/Dorival Pinheiro Filho/Jundiaí City Hall)