| Abstract |
Frost is a climate phenomenon which consists in the decrease of temperature to values under 0 °C. It occurs every year between April and September in the Andean regions of Peru, especially in areas over 3000 m.a.s.l., causing health problems to the population, damages to their houses, loss of great extensions of crops and cattle and, in some cases, the decease of vulnerable people and animals. Many of the measures taken by the Peruvian government up to 2013 to face the problem were reactive, providing people blankets and vaccination to prepare them for the impacts of low temperatures. However, since 2014 plans included interventions aimed at reducing the vulnerability of the population and their livelihoods, such as the implementation of interventions to provide thermal comfort inside houses. Unfortunately, these measures have not been successful due to high costs and insufficient increase in temperatures of the technologies, high dispersion of the population, great difficulty to access affected areas, among others. The present study uses geographical information systems to overlap zones with the greatest impact of frosts, with low to medium geothermal areas and places that have social services like the “Tambos†in charge of the Ministry of Development and Social Inclusion, which have physical facilities and services, fully equipped with technology and human resources for the provision of services. The assessment identifies potential zones for the direct use of geothermal energy in the provision of heat to Tambos, sheds for animals and greenhouses to preserve crops in areas affected by frosts. The software QGIS Version 3.4.8. was used to integrate the information gathered from official institutions like the Mining and Metallurgical Geological Institute (INGEMMET), the National Center for the Estimation, Prevention and Reduction of Disaster Risk (CENEPRED) and the National Geo-Referenced System Sayhuite from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers of Peru. Twenty zones that matched all the requirements mentioned above, were selected for further calculations like the distance from the geothermal source to the Tambo, the slope of the territory and chemical properties of the geothermal resource, in order to find the areas that could be technically feasible for the implementation of geothermal direct use projects. |