The Importance of Understanding and Mitigating the Risk of Flooding of the Tâmega River in the City of Amarante

Over the centuries, Amarante suffered several episodes of flooding due to its morphological characteristics. Amarante is located in a depression area, and the Tâmega River passes alongside the historic center. These specific characteristics hamper the efforts to mitigate the damages arising from episodes of flooding (Costa in O risco de inundacao na cidade de Amarante (Norte de Portugal): contributo metodologico para o seu estudo, Revista Territorium n.o 16, pp. 99–111 (2009b) [6]). The main purpose of this work is to evaluate how the residents and the shopkeepers in the city center perceive and minimize the consequences of flooding. In addition, we aim to present a database of residents and shopkeepers on this issue and to understand their plans to tackle this problem in the future. Consequently, this work wishes to promote measures, to support projects that aim to reduce the losses of the population of Amarante and to develop proposals to prevent the flooding in the high-risk areas. The methodology used consisted in the collection of information through a structured questionnaire, including a pre-test, composed of structured and unstructured questions. We use the SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences to analyze the data collection. This article also compiles several documents, listed in the references, related to the identification of the main problems experienced by the population. Furthermore, based on the results of the surveys, we created a Manual of Good Practices (MGP) and a group of volunteers to assist the shopkeepers and/or residents (in the removal of furniture/products, among others).