Organizational capacities for managing geo-hydrological disaster risks in priority municipalities in Brazil.

Abstract

This article assesses the needs and capacities for Disaster Risk Management (DRM) in Brazilian municipalities most susceptible to landslides and floods. The analyses involved counting planning instruments for DRM and their relationships with governance, structuring, and capacitation of DRM in local organizations, as well as municipal population size. The results demonstrated that the presence of instruments is linearly associated with municipalities' organizational capacities for DRM and municipal population size. Therefore, it is concluded that implementing public DRM policies requires developing organizational capacities at the local level. The occurrence of severe disasters in recent years supports the need to articulate different scales and organizations in DRM.