Availability of open data for flood resilience in Curitiba (Parana)

Urban managers face the challenge of a lack of updated data. The Information Access Law emphasized the importance of making data openly accessible so that the population can use it freely. At the same time, the incidence of disasters in cities has increased in recent years, with the production of disaster risk data being one of the government's functions. The more detailed the identification of the risks associated with natural hazards, the more effective the measures for reducing impacts will become.

The objective of this work is to understand whether open data are being made available and are sufficient to be used as an instrument of resilience to floods. To this end, the application was carried out in the city of Curitiba, in three stages:

(1) searching for files on the city hall's open data portal;

(2) search for non-systematized files on the official pages of the municipality; and

(3) interviewing social actors about the importance of accessing data in understanding risks. The results showed that only 77% of the 84 items investigated had open files. All social actors claim to receive no incentives from the government to use open data, but consider making them available very important.