Brazil's Southeast region has been facing water supply challenges, especially concerning the metropolitan region of São Paulo, since 2014. We adressed the water crisis from the disaster's point of view, considering that one of the guiding features to characterize a disaster is the amount of affected people and the losses associated. In the situation under review, there are people directly affected, because of intermittent house water supply, and indirectly affected by the increase of prices for goods, since their production and manufacturing depend on the availability of water. We presented each of the stages of a disaster risk management: prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. The risk of water scarcity in São Paulo is only one aspect of the discussion involving the effectiveness of management processes and the need for investments in the area, especially in reducing wasteful distribution.

Quando se fala em desastres relacionados à água no Brasil, faz-se uma associação direta com as inundações, que são responsáveis por muitos registros de mortes e pessoas afetadas no país. Entretanto, há outras extensões da interface entre água e desastres que merecem atenção. O extremo oposto das inundações, por exemplo, se traduz em seca efetiva e seca agrícola (seca verde), ambas com sérias consequências para a população atingida. A erosão hídrica e as implicações do manejo da água em questões de fragilidade ambiental, por sua vez, relacionam-se a desastres de caráter ambiental. Outro aspecto importante são os desdobramentos do desastre hidrológico em si, pois há efeitos que surgem e se mantêm no período pós-desastre, como epidemias e ingestão de água imprópria para o consumo humano. Neste artigo foram apontados os principais desafios para diminuir os riscos relacionados a desastres e recursos hídricos e sugerimos ações para um gerenciamento integrado de recursos hídricos, saúde pública e desastres.

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Buildings demand a significant amount of energy during their life cycles, hence, effective design measures need to be adopted to ensure efficient energy usage and management in buildings. This study proposes a framework based on various performance parameters to enable decision-makers utilizing standard procedures and software to empower the process of sustainable energy use and management in buildings, through a parametric analysis in different climatic conditions. Experimental design is adopted within the framework via the use of various performance parameters related to the building design (i.e., construction materials for exterior walls and roofs, as well as a set of window-to-wall ratios). Results indicate that climate data plays a fundamental role in the choice of design factors that are best suited for effective energy consumption in buildings. In particular, sub-type climate classifications, as opposed to the primary climate group, have a minor influence. Around 15% improvement in the energy consumption in buildings is noticed due to changes to the design factor such as the window-to-wall ratio. Insights that can be gleaned from this study include the impact of space area, exterior openings and material thickness and choice for the envelope of the building in all climate classifications, aiding in the design of low-energy buildings.

Over the last decades, new materials with outstanding performance have been introduced in the construction industry. Considering these new technologies, it is worth mentioning that nanotechnology has revolutionized various areas of engineering. In the area of civil engineering and construction, cement is used for various purposes and the search to improve its performance has been receiving growing interest within the scientific community. The objective of this research was to evaluate the behavior of cement mortar produced by the addition of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) in different concentrations by comparing their physical and mechanical properties with the properties of the nanotube-free composite. Motivated by the lack of consensus in the literature concerning to the optimal dosage of CNTs in cementitious matrices, three different carbon nanotube ratios, 0.20, 0.40 and 0.60 wt % Portland cement, were investigated with the aim of evaluating the mechanical properties. Destructive tests were carried out to determine the compressive strength, flexural strength and split tensile strength. Additionally, a non-destructive test was performed to determine the dynamic elastic modulus and density. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images showed the interaction between the MWCNTs and the hydration products of Portland cement mortar. The results indicated the potential contribution of 0.40 wt % cement CNTs to the enhancement of the mechanical properties of the cement composite as a promising construction material.

More than 226 million people are affected by some type of disaster every year in various dimensions of human life, both in the short and long term. In this context, housing provision plays a leading role when it comes to basic needs and the choice of construction technologies and materials are determinant for a well-succeeded housing provision process. This work aims to analyze the viability of reinforced masonry technology with cement-stabilized compressed earth blocks as an alternative for the (re)construction process in situations that involve disaster risk reduction (DRR). To address this issue, a discussion from the literature and the main results obtained during the investigations carried out within the scope of the Simple Housing Solution (SHS) Project are presented. In the sequence, analyses are performed under United Nations Development Program/International Recovery Platform sustainability recommendations: environmental, technical, financial and socio-organizational aspects. It is concluded that the technology of Compressed Earth Blocks (CEBs) reinforced structural masonry has a high potential to be successfully applied in DRR situations, especially when associated with the community construction system in a joint effort.

The increasing figures of natural disasters and related human and material losses represent a major challenge to be faced by the Brazilian government, the scientific community and civil society all together. Landslides and floods resulting from climatic extremes have been associated not only to global climatic changes, but mostly due to the increase of population vulnerability and the lack of effective mitigation actions. Core governmental responses to mitigate such losses include the creation of operational centers for disaster monitoring and management -Cemaden (National Early Warning and Monitoring Centre of Natural Disasters) and CENAD (Centro Nacional de Gerenciamento de Riscos e Desastres). The establishment of these institutions associated with investments to map risky areas are key to implement landslides and floods monitoring systems. Despite significant investments, the implementation of such natural disaster monitoring systems depend much on cooperative actions among organizations and entities from different sectors of the society. The main objective of this work is to present the challenges and perspectives of innovative digital ecosystems designed to effectively monitor, warn and respond to natural disasters related to landslides and floods in Brazil. The several methodologies adopted make use of technical, scientific and empirical knowledge to establish a rain gauge network of 1400 automatic pluviometers and 1100 semiautomatic pluviometers, distributed in more than 800 municipalities defined as priority ones by the Brazilian National Plan of Risk Management and Response to Natural Disasters. Pilot projects of landslides monitoring systems are also included in the methodology in key municipalities where the number of human losses has been significant in recent disasters. In order to develop such challenging methodologies, Cemaden has worked together with the Center for Information Technology Renato Archer (CTI), CENAD, a number of research institutions, the private sector, local and regional governments and non-governmental organizations as well as the civil society. The combination of different types of knowledge, technological approaches and levels of interaction to population under risk of such a variety of organizations shall configure a collective intelligence able to improve the efficiency and confidence of early warnings of landslides and floods, as well as to promote further commitment of local governments and communities to respond to warnings. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.4 [Information storage and retrieval]:Systems and software -current awareness systems (selective dissemination of information--SDI), information networks, performance evaluation (efficiency and effectiveness), question-answering (fact retrieval), user profiles and alerts systems.

The Beal Conjecture was formulated in 1997 and presented as a generalization of Fermat's Last Theorem, within the number theory´s field. It states that, for X, Y, Z, n 1 , n 2 and n 3 positive integers with n 1 , n 2 , n 3 > 2, if X n1 +Y n2 =Z n3 then X, Y, Z must have a common prime factor. This article aims to present developments on Beal Conjecture, obtained from the correspondences between the real solutions of the equations in the forms A 2 + B 2 = C 2 (here simply refereed as Pythagoras´ equation), δ n + γ n =α n (here simply refereed as Fermat´s equation) and X n1 +Y n2 =Z n3 (here simply referred as Beal´s equation). Starting from a bibliographical research on the Beal Conjecture, prime numbers and Fermat's Last Theorem, these equations were freely explored, searching for different aspects of their meanings. The developments on Beal Conjecture are divided into four parts: geometric illustrations; correspondence between the real solutions of Pythagoras´ equation and Fermat's equation; deduction of the transforms between the real solutions of Fermat's equation and the Beal´s equation; and analysis and discussion about the topic, including some examples. From the correspondent Pythagoras´ equation, if one of the terms A, B or C is taken as an integer reference basis, demonstrations enabled to show that the Beal Conjecture is correct if the remaining terms, when squared, are integers.