The issue of risks was discussed during the round table “Planning and Living in the City” with Gilles Grandjean, co-director of Risks research program. He emphasised the need to develop integrated risk and disaster management, taking into account natural, technological, environmental and social dimensions.
Urban centres indeed concentrate numerous socio-economic stakes organised in highly complex ways. Beyond the safety of people and property, integrated management of risks in urban areas also aims to provide or maintain a certain level of well-being for inhabitants. This implies planning strategies aimed at reducing risks and disasters, as well as sustainable solutions accepted by all stakeholders in these territories.
Urban and peri-urban areas: specific risk basins studied within Risks program
Through its integrative and multidisciplinary approach, the program is positioned within this framework. It brings together researchers in geosciences, engineering, social sciences and humanities, and digital sciences to understand the natural and social processes that generate risks, and to develop innovative tools to better detect, quantify, anticipate and manage risks and disasters. It also aims to contribute to the development of a new national strategy for risk and disaster management.
One of the program’s six scientific axes is dedicated to risks in urbanised and industrial areas and densely populated zones, where multiple natural, social and infrastructural vulnerabilities intersect.
The Risques NaTech project focuses specifically on these risks in urban and peri-urban territories. “NaTech” refers to the impact of a natural hazard on an industrial facility, potentially affecting areas outside the site, people, property or the environment. The project aims to:
- Co-construct NaTech scenarios with stakeholders in the three territories studied in France;
- Develop digital tools and models for NaTech risk assessment, including modelling the impacts of natural hazards on industrial facilities while accounting for ageing infrastructure and vulnerability to natural hazards, and methods to analyse and characterise cascading effects;
- Confront scenarios and models with field realities in order to develop decision-support and crisis management tools.
The challenges faced by cities and their territorial extensions in a context of global change mobilise many researchers in risk sciences, geographers, urban planners, sociologists and others to study these issues and invent the urbanity of tomorrow.