Catastrophes and localities: Vulnerability

Vulnerability and risks: A recent approach to risk-exposure

Yvette Veyret and Magali Reghezza

For a long time, studies have focused on risks and hazards more than on vulnerability or risk-exposure. And for a long time, societies have reacted by giving priority to protective measures and technical solutions for reducing risks or limiting the effects. During the 20th century, the analyses of certain French geographers did, however, take the notion of risk-exposure into account. The approaches adopted along with the perspectives thus opened are reviewed as well as the contribution of this concept to risk-management. The practical limits of its application are examined as illustrated by its integration in risk-prevention plans.

 
Financial vulnerability to “large-scale risks”

Erwann Michel-Kerjan

There have always been catastrophes, but data collected over the past fifteen years clearly show that more and more large-scale destructive events are occurring at an ever increasing cost. This trend raises, once again, the issue of the exposure to these new risks and the question of risk-management, in particular financial coverage. Who should pay for the economic and social consequences? How to “share” risks? The role and responsibility of the private sphere and, too, of the government are called into question.

 
Regional maps of risk-exposure, tools for thought and decision-making: The Piedmont Region and Varese Province, Italy

Carmelo di Mauro and Sara Bouchon

How to make the concepts of risk and risk-exposure operational? How to advance knowledge by developing techniques for assisting decision-making? Answers can be gleaned from the experiences of the Piedmont and Varese Province, and from the implementation of innovative techniques for improving risk management, in particular, for better assessing the exposure of localities to risks.

 
Applying the concept of risk-exposure to critical infrastructures: What implications for managing risks territorially ?

Sara Bouchon

How to foresee the impact of a major blackout? of a rupture in the supply of drinking water? of a paralysis of a system of transportation? Given these new threats to vital infrastructures, how to locate spatially the points of vulnerability if a critical service breaks down? How to analyze and measure the effects? The problems encountered in this field reveal the difficulties societies have in foreseeing and managing a new type of risk.

Diagnosing risk-exposure to flooding: An effective means of prevention

Nicolas-Gérard Camp'huis and Claire Devaux-Ros

Floods in southeastern France regularly remind us of the limits of “full protection”. A procedure for reducing the risks to persons and property has been successfully tested in the Loire River valley. However much is still to be done in order to make people aware that reducing risk-exposure is a strategy for reducing risk as important — and perhaps even more effective — than building levees or dams.

 
Making buildings less vulnerable to natural risks

Jean-Luc Salagnac

Down through the centuries, construction changed from being an empirical to a codified procedure. Tools for preventing natural risks have been developed and are now permanent. But there is no lack of reason for modifying them: advances in knowledge, new experiences, the analysis of the structural framework of older buildings, the possible effects of a probable climatic change… The requirement of overall coherence and, therefore, the need for more cooperation between various parties must be borne in mind.

 
An overview of the development of the sociology of catastrophes, 1917-1978

Bernadette de Vanssay

The sociology of disasters was born out of WW II and the inability of science and technology to cope alone with emergencies. It developed following various catastrophes that marked the 20th century. Sociology, psychology, political science, geography and history have, in turn, been put to use. Initially in the United States and then in English-speaking lands, Japan and elsewhere in Europe, this new discipline has slowly acquired its independence.

The risk of casualties owing to imprudent acts during a flood

Theresa Wilson

Big floods inevitably cause human lives to be lost, but there are also casualties, even deaths, due to imprudent acts. Braving danger to rescue goods or lives, seeking shelter, or simply being curious and wanting to have a look… the range of risky behavior is broad. But how common is such behavior? And what motivates it? These two questions must be answered if the number of avoidable deaths during a catastrophe is to be reduced.

Drawing the lessons from Katrina

Paul-Henri Bourrelier

Eight months after hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, we can start analyzing the event. A first American-European meeting was held on 23 February 2006 in Paris at the initiative of the French Association for Natural Disaster Reduction (AFPCN). Other meetings will take place on early warning procedures (Bonn) and national platforms of prevention. Parties on both shores of the Atlantic are convinced that the response to this type of menace involves, above all, cooperation.

 
Séchilienne, an announced risk

Michel Badré and Philippe Huet

Although natural risks are often managed in an emergency once they happen, the announced Séchilienne landslide is an exception. For more than twenty years, this complex risk in the French Alps has been analyzed, and authorities have made decisions based on the presumed dangers of an event that has not yet taken place. This description of an atypical process of risk-management discusses the approaches, results and questions related to this predicted risk.

Miscellany : Reach

 
Reach: legitimate objectives, the indispensable adaptation

Catherine Tissot-Colle and Catherine Lequime

Manufacturers did not wait for the project Reach before showing interest in the risks of their products for health and the environment. Though sharing the aims of this EU project, which has no equivalent elsewhere in the world, they are concerned about its impact on firms in a highly competitive, global environment. The debate during 2005 has cleared up some points and simplified others, but major concerns still exist.

 
Reach, or how to manage risks related to chemicals by 2020

Pablo Libreros

Reach is intended to reform procedures for managing risks in the European chemical industry by 2007. This EU reform is a response both to a social demand and to advances in knowledge. Its objective will have a major cultural impact on all parties: manufacturers, the industries that use chemicals, public authorities, associations and consumers. Whether new regulations will be successful depends on the implementation of this reform in everyday life.

 
Reach, the myth

Jacky Bonnemains

From exclusions to exemptions, from uncertain deadlines to unrealistic objectives, the supranational war machine against risky chemicals — the way some parties see Reach — might turn out to be a mere ersatz, a European institute restricted to recording, without controlling, a few thousand chemicals by 2010-2020. Obligations of accountability, surveys of environmental organizations, research by toxicologists and epidemiologists, the chemical industry’s efforts and the vigilance of EU member states… a steady course must be steered, with or without Reach.

 
What to think of Reach?

An interview with Corinne Lepage, president of Cap 21 and former minister

“Reach must be seen as a component of public health and, too, as an intelligent vision of the economy and industry. It is high time to change our way of looking at the economy; if we do not do so very soon, we are going to pay a high price.”