Incidences of pluviosity increase in the preservation of Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas - Word Heritage.

MELIN NAVA HUNG
Universidad Central de Venezuela

The tropical perturbation displacements experimented by the formation areas toward the south of 10º N parallel, are increasing the pluviosity in Venezuela in the last years. The later is exposing to hurricane risks the Venezuelan north area, where 80% population lives, and where are concentrated almost all the architectural, urban and historical heritage of the country, as are the case of Puerto de Coro, La Vela (1993) and Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas (2000). In high pluviosity conditions, all these emplacements are vulnerable to water floods. Our work tries to quantify such vulnerability focusing on the particular case of Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas.

Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas is located in the intersection of two rivers, one of them serving as the most important residual water collectors of Caracas during the last 60 years. This work tries to assess the potential effect on the preservation challenges of Ciudad Universitaria de Caracas, since it is not surprising that the above mentioned environmental variables alter the building basements as a consequence of soil degradation. The above phenomenon has been understood within the framework of the multiples pathologic problems of the emplacement, which is making the heritage building more vulnerable due to possible flood effects. In this research we also present an inventory of sensitive heritage buildings, and we try also to detect a flood threshold where the building preservations become in risk. This is done in order to understand the correlation between the environmental variable and the river behavior. Finally, to reinforce the heritage building preservation policies, we propose some strategies that would help to mitigate the flood effects.