Niteroi Resilience Plan
Intensive administrative cooperation for effective disaster prevention
Niteroi is a Brazilian coastal city surrounded by hills just outside Rio de Janeiro. With its approximately 500,000 inhabitants, Niteroi’s economy focuses mainly on commerce and services. In 2010, the city had the highest Human Development Index in the state of Rio de Janeiro and the seventh largest among Brazilian municipalities. Also, it is the first of the state concerning sanitation performance.
As a coastal city, Niteroi has at the same time, many tourism possibilities with extraordinary beaches, but also, problems related to sea level rising and eventual rough seas. Climate change has also contributed to an increase in droughts and wildfires.
The city is located between the sea and the hills and in the past decades, with the increasing of the city combined with a non-structured urbanistic plan, most of the hillsides were irregularly occupied by low-income families in a massive way. As the result of this situation, Niteroi has areas occupied by vulnerable people where there are significant risks of land sliding.
In April 2010, more than 240 people died in landslides, most of which occurred on the hills surrounding the city. After that, many preventive actions were made, aiming to reduce the number of accidents and deaths, what generated excellent results.
Finally, the municipal government has developed a Resilience Plan aiming to strengthen the direct and indirect actions of the Niteroi Civil Defense. It has had a great importance and a strong impact in the city. The plan was finalized and launched in December 2019 and its implementation has already started.
