The geohistory of risks tested out in the field: from the knowledge of phenomena to the geopolitics of risks. The case of the floods in the Rhine Graben
Brice MARTIN, UHA Mulhouse, France
Since 2008, four Franco-German research programs have explored the issue of flooding in the Rhine Graben through a geohistorical angle. This had a first advantage: to allow the researchers involved to be identified by flood risk managers as resource persons, around an awareness of the interest of floods geohistory, for the knowledge of the risk and support for actions in favor of prevention. In Alsace, public tenders are thus regularly proposed around the “geohistory of floods”, in a relatively broad appreciation and for quite varied needs. This is where the second advantage lies: behind the demand for spatial and temporal knowledge for risk management (Giacona et al. 2019), there are rather diversified needs which lead to re-examine the field of the geohistory of risks on the conceptual, methodological and applied aspects, especially in terms of objectives between understanding the past, explaining the present and enlightening the future. It is indeed common to study risks geohistory through the identification of extreme events of the past, to contextualize them (Martin et al. 2019) and to explain their evolution in time and space through comparative diachronic evolution of hazards and vulnerability. It is more delicate to transpose them into a current or future context because, beyond the methodological precautions (Martin et al. 2017), this implies extending the field of risks geohistory to the geohistory of risk management and to the geohistory of perception and representations of risk. Therefore, the applied approach questions public decision-making, political choices, the geo-legal framework linked to the territorialization of risk and, ultimately, the geopolitical dimension that must be understood in two ways: the evolution of power relationships and conflicts around risk management, but also the geopolitical dimension associated with geohistorical knowledge of risks. This communication will address all these aspects through the case of floods in Alsace.
Mots clés : geohistory|risks |floods|geopolitic|management
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