In France and for the whole population, the safety of workers does not seem to be a priority, except for wage-earners in the nuclear industry. Worse yet, the public administration has not satisfactorily addressed this issue. Established a few decades ago and having evolved little since then, the Work Inspectorate and Office of Occupational Medicine must now handle impossible assignments with a lack of means. An exceptional event like the 2001 chemical plant explosion in Toulouse should help adapt our system (or at least classified installations) to needs and expectations in the 21st century. Setting up an industrial safety agency endowed with the means necessary for filling its assignments, ranging from research to the drawing up of regulations and authorizations for inspections, might respond to these expectations.

A first experiment on public hearings for an announced project: A new airport — why? how? and where ?
Pierre Zémor

The so-called “Barnier” hearings were a response to the public’s aspirations to be informed and take part in a decision-making process; they also represented an attempt to respond to expectations about improving projects. During recent hearings about installing a third airport in the greater Paris area, a new question arose about consultations much earlier in the decision-making process. Given methodological improvements for ensuring an original, satisfactory procedure for public hearings in this much more complex situation, “research-observation”, without respecting the minimal requirements for an analysis, assessed these Ducsai hearings in the light of rules that were as invalid as inappropriate. Public hearings are a learning process, and methods have much to learn by creatively stimulating new situations. The lack of understanding and reluctance of various parties — wary of consultations, changes or reforms — hamper progress.

Air pollution: The need for and difficulties of a global vision of environment and health
Bernard Festy

Out of objective perceptions of local air pollution and its fixed sources, both industrial and domestic, consciousness has gradually arisen about the importance of mobile sources and, too, of changes in the scale of pollution, for instance at the regional and planetary levels, with major consequences for the environment and health. Besides this “public sphere” of pollution, worries have arisen about the quality of air indoors. This mainly (but not exclusively) “private sphere” arouses other expectations and calls for actions. This apparently contradictory trend, which both “globalizes” and “personalizes” air-related risks, raises questions about the approaches and instruments necessary for studying the impact on health : epidemiological and toxicological knowledge, human exposures, and the description and evaluation of risks. Managing these risks, apparently a clearer issue at the local than at the planetary level, must take into account, 

Hidden dimensions in sustainable development and changes in regions
Philippe Jamet

Given issues related to sustainable development, planners must look beyond the two dimensionality of maps and blueprints. They have to move beyond talk about functionality and take into consideration all the stakes in a choice so as to glimpse the dimensions hidden in actions on a territorial unit — dimensions of a spatial, temporal or conceptual sort. If these three aspects are bypassed (a risk inherent in the very notions of planning and development, which aim at satisfying a need limited in space and time), the consequences might be even more problems in relation to sustainable development. This is shown through, in particular, a study of areas where tourism thrives.

Role-playing, SIG and SMA for “territorial management”… And if actors/decisions-makers were to build their own tools?
Patrick d’Aquino, Christophe Le Page, François Bousquet and Alassane Bah

The emergence of a localized management of the territory does not mean a transfer of the tools for “participatory diagnosis” and local planning, but instead the transfer of the means for actors to manage by themselves the whole process in a truly endogenous way. Rather than “sharing” the analyses made by experts, the effort is made to imagine the basis for developing responsibility for a local process of negotiation grounded in an “endogenous representation” of the territory and its future. The intention is not, however, to simplify — in a classical study of “what the actors say” — information and diagnoses that should remain complex if they are to have operational scope. For this reason, the use of and experimentation with the latest advances in information and simulation systems, associated with original techniques of role-playing, can enable local actors to understand from within the complex knowledge necessary for managing a territory.

A tale of two tempests: Cooperating and mobilizing for an emergency in ÉdF-GdF service centers
Jérôme Cihuelo

In December 1999, two storms swept over France the one after the other. Électricité de France and Gaz de France were forced to cope with a national emergency. Restoring electricity depended on the commitment of many people and the implementation of major technical, organizational arrangements. In line with the “feedback” procedure (in which the author took part as a labor sociologist) used by the electrical utility, this article analyzes the collective mobilization of crisis management. What does the response to these storms tell us about forms of cooperation and professional commitment in an emergency within a public enterprise that is undergoing a lasting, deep transformation ?

The Amicale des Ingénieurs du Corps des Mines regularly organizes meetings for presenting its members (leaders in the civil service or the private sector) with ideas about problems related to current events or to deep trends in society. Since June 1998, a group has been presenting members with approaches to problems related to the effectiveness, control and regulation of the assignments made to public officials. The following themes arose during the meetings held from October 1999 till April 2001: health and environment, rail transportation, the postal service, maritime transportation, air traffic, truck transportation, transparency, work inspections. A first seminar was organized on 2 September 1999 around the theme of changes in the state’s fundamental activities. The proceedings were published in the series Responsibilité & Environnement of Annales des Mines (n°.16-17, January 2000). This article presents the exchanges on 4 May 2001.