Territorial Risk Complexity, Expertise and Research – CRITERE

This project considers risks’integration in socio-economic territorial management policies from a point of view based on complex systems. Risks’ integration (and more accurately road risk which this research deals with) at local level, faces various interactions and regulations, which are operated by users and stakeholders, on different scales. This proposal combines in a multidisciplinary approach the specific contribution of local experts with the one of researchers, in aim to elaborate a new shape of territorial analysis system, simultaneaously innovating upon research and efficient upon land management.

Road risk (road accident potentiality) and road safety (means used to minimize their occurrence and seriousness) are considered as partial results of urban morphology and spatial organization, as dysfunction of circulation systems, but also as a phenomenon regulated among a surrounding complex urban system.

This territorial complexity involves to mix the empirical knowledge of risks local managers, the job of whom produces a concrete experience of real accidents and observation of safety action effects, and hypothetico-deductive approaches of researchers, based on more formalized methods and tools, much more convenient to generalization.
This project tries to build a new generation (SOLAP-ArcGIS) of geomatic user interface, combining the both ways of thinking in one single tool, useful for a real time discussion when decisions must be taken and justified in a road safety policy procedure.
This project is tested on the LMCU territory (Lille, France, 1 000 000 inhabitants), the stakeholders of which are deeply involved in such questions and collaboration with researchers several years ago.

The project feasability raises from a competence synergy between a network of laboratories and actors who have already worked in partnership : 2 laboratories in geography (GEOSYSCOM – UMR 6266 CNRS from Caen University, « Image, Ville et Environnement » (LIVE) – ERL 7230 CNRS from Strasbourg), 1 laboratory in accidentology from INRETS-MA de Marne-la-Vallée, 1 laboratory specialised in informatics (GREYC – MADE in Caen, and géomatic team directed by Y. Bédard (industrial research CRSNG geospatial databases in University of Laval, Québec).
The concrete expected result of this work is a method for territorial complexity risk analysis and it’s geomatic interface tool:
1: spatial analysis module (GIS) used to reveal the road risk spatial entities as analyzed by geographers
2: expert speech (concepts) decoding module, with it’s extension to re-coding functions in corresponding GIS entities
3: user interface (GUI) facilitating in real time the requests, graphical visualization,and reformulation of results, during researchers/experts workshops.
The whole system will be tested and evaluated on prior road safety questions considered by LMCU, and will be proposed to political staff.