This postdoctoral research focuses on risk/territory relationships and territorialized major risk management processes, particularly in urban areas. It is supported by LabeX Futurs Urbains and involves three laboratories: LATTS, headed by Valérie November; LEESU, headed by Gilles Hubert and José-Frédéric Deroubaix; and Lab'Urba, headed by Jocelyne Dubois-Maury. As such, the research has an experimental dimension involving inter-laboratory work and is designed to address the issues faced by operational stakeholders.
In this context, the EPA ORSA (Etablissement Public d’Aménagement Orly-Rungis, Seine-Amont) and the project it is carrying out in the context of the metropolization of the Ile-de-France region (Grand Paris project, express metro, CDT, new metropolitan authorities) and in a territory subject to numerous risks, appear to be an ideal subject.
Identified since the 1990s as one of the sectors with high potential and challenges for the future development of the Paris metropolitan area, the ORSA territory is the subject of an OIN launched in 2007, and the EPA is responsible for the various projects spread across the territory.
Overall, the major challenges of these operations relate to economic conversion (from heavy industry to cutting-edge industry/research, upgrading logistics infrastructure), mobility (better connecting the territory to Paris (north-south axis), but above all promoting east-west travel within the territory) and the development of the housing stock. These already complex challenges are compounded by environmental issues, particularly those relating to major risks.
The Seine-Amont area in particular is at high risk of flooding, with potential repercussions for the entire metropolis located downstream. In addition, there are numerous Seveso establishments and high-risk industrial sites scattered throughout the area. One of the central questions for the EPA is therefore: "How can we build a city in a high-risk area?"
The final choice of development projects to be studied, as well as the precise scope of the research questions, are currently being developed in consultation with the EPA. However, a few points can already be made.
One avenue concerns the "effects" of the urban development process (in the broadest sense, from the first texts identifying the territory to the models presented recently, from political decisions to the establishment of bodies such as the EPA, etc.) on the risk footprint in the territory itself.
In other words, does the fact that a territory is involved in a development project (with the financing, studies, power relations, proposals, and outputs that this implies) have an impact—and if so, what kind—on the way in which the actors who will be directly affected by an event consider the risk, prepare for it, and/or organize themselves collectively? Or do these projects develop in a kind of "fictitious territoriality," with their process only impacting the "living" territory once the developments are built?
The idea is therefore to conduct a study among all the actors who would be directly affected in the event of a flood or industrial accident in order to identify the means and measures implemented to address these risks, and to analyze how the development process initiated in the 1990s (in all its forms) has intervened/is intervening (or not) in this construction of the conditions for action in the event of an incident.
This will involve surveying crisis management stakeholders (emergency services, SIDPC, etc.), companies operating in the sector (industrial sites, transport network operators), associations, etc. on how they view risks and translate them into plans/measures/tools/organizations. The analysis will then aim to identify, in these different translations of risk, traces of the urban project process in order to shed light on the extent to which and how this type of project intervenes in the process of territorialization of risks.
The Ardoines site appears to be particularly interesting in this regard, as the project is about to be implemented and the first operations are expected to begin soon. Another project site could be included in the study for comparative purposes. Its definition is still in progress.
Keywords: Major risks, Territorialization, Urban Projects, Action in context