Geospatial Analysis of Geotechnical Data Applied to Urban Infrastructure Planning

Mendes, Rodolfo Moreda, Lorandi, Reinaldo, Journal of Geographic Information System

1. Introduction

Industrialisation in underdeveloped countries is an important part of participation in the urbanization process. We can consider industry as one of the great causal factors of urbanization, and, for this reason, industrialized areas are also the most urbanized. As several examinations have shown, the interior of the State of Sao Paulo (Brazil) has presented the most significant rates of population growth in the entire state in the last decade (Negri and Pacheco, 1993; Caiado and Vasconcelos, 1994; Campolina Dinis and Santos, 1995).

The migration process to the interior of the State of Sao Paulo is related to the intervals of proximity to the metropolitan area of the city of Sao Paulo, according to Birkholz et al. (1983). In the interval of proximities, the important urban centers of Ribeirao Preto, Presidente Prudente, Bauru and Sao Jose do Rio Preto are included. The city of Sao Jose do Rio Preto (State of Sao Paulo) is located at an important railway and roadway east-west axis of the State of Sao Paulo, which offers conditions for its growth, and is set fundamentally in the tertiary sector. However, the constitution of new industrial and agriculture-industrial spaces in the interior of Sao Paulo was not capable of avoiding the collapse of the basic urban public infrastructure in the development process. This view shows the current situation of the city of Sao Jose do Rio Preto, composed mainly of an irregular pattern of single floor residential constructions, which have foundations and urban infrastructure in places that lack previous suitability studies. These often do not satisfy the natural relationship potentials of the urban physical territory/ocupation.

Therefore, in this paper a space analysis of the main attributes of the physical territory of the urban center area of Sao Jose do Rio Preto was prepared, with the intention of obtaining, using the database produced by Mendes (2001), interpretative charts for shallow foundations and underground constructions that can evaluate and indicate areas where potentials of urban physical territory are adapted in an efficient way. The objective was to minimise or repair the current problems of irregular urban occupation. These interpretative charts can guide local investigations, allowing us, in certain circumstances, to decrease costs, time and the number of situations to be studied and investigated.

2. Area of Study

The studied area (Figure 1) is located in the Western Region of the State of Sao Paulo (Brazil), between the parallels 20[degrees]47'00" and 20[degrees]51'10" South and the meridians 49[degrees]24'58" and 49[degrees]20'13" West, possessing an area of 60.0 [km.sup.2]. According to Brazil-IBGE (2001), the city of Sao Jose do Rio Preto presents, in the census of 2000, total and urban populations of 357.862 hab and 336.998 hab, respectively. The resident population in the municipal seat and the demographic density are, respectively, 326.627 hab and 827 hab/[Km.sup.2]

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

According to Arid (1966), the studied area is classified, as a humid tropical climate that possesses annual medium temperatures around 25.4[degrees]C. A general view of the vegetation shows that it is composed of 10.4% permanent cultures, 18.9% annual, 52.9% grassland, 7.9% forests and 9.9% lazy and reforested lands. In the developed area pedologic formations prevail with thick soils represented by red-yellow latosol and yellow latosol. On the slopes of the main valley and in end northeast of the area, stains of red-yellow latosol intergrade argisol appear, representing an intermediary level of pedologic evolution.

The gleisols distributed along the valleys of the main drainage lines can be associated with conditional specific geotechnics as profile organic clays of low bearing capacity and shallow level of water, with direct influence on the geotechnic properties of the soil aggregate. The other pedological units, such as argisols and cambisols, have restricted occurrence in the study area (Augusto Filho, Ridente and Alves 1999).

According to Barcha (1980), in the studied area the soils sufficiently favour infiltration conditions due to their grain size distributions. They are, for the most part, sandy soils of the Adamantina and Santo Anastacio formations, both belonging to the Bauru group (Cretaceous) where the sand fraction always prevails ([+ or -] 70%), varying the fine grain size, with a clayey silt fraction around 30%. The Adamantina formation is composed of fine sandstone; quartzose with clayey particles; cementation carbonaceous with plan-parallel stratification and crusades of medium load; clay banks with a massive, brown-reddish tone and recent sediments of the Quaternary composed of fine sand alleviation with beige and light gray tones; and sandy and/or silty clay with light to dark gray tone. The Santo Anastacio formation appears in areas that accompany the quotas with more drops in the river and streamlet valleys, represented by brown-reddish and violet tones of sandstone with fine to medium grain size, generally regulated to bad grain size distribution and rounded particle size covered by limonitic film. On the surface of the studied area only the Adamantina formation appears at the depth of the Santo Anastacio formation. The Adamantina formation is more expressive, with a thickness varying from 58 meters up to 140 meters. The rocky blooming is relatively rare, occurring mainly in the drainage lines.

According to the geomorphological division of the State of Sao Paulo (Sao Paulo--FFLCH/USP-IPTFAPESP, 1997), the studied area is located in the morphostructural unit of the Parana sedimentary basin that embraces a morphosculptural unit, denominated "western tableland from Sao Paulo", and presents the following characteristics: the unit occupies almost 50% of the total area of the State of Sao Paulo, and the relief of this morphosculpture is, in general, slightly waved with a …

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Publication information: Article title: Geospatial Analysis of Geotechnical Data Applied to Urban Infrastructure Planning. Contributors: Mendes, Rodolfo Moreda - Author, Lorandi, Reinaldo - Author. Journal title: Journal of Geographic Information System. Volume: 2. Issue: 1 Publication date: January 2010. Page number: 23+. © 2010 Scientific Research Publishing, Inc. COPYRIGHT 2010 Gale Group.

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