Geography Serving Risk Mitigation
Often segmented, approaches to assess the tsunami risk may assess the hazard individually, or estimate the stakes and vulnerabilities, and this, often in a disciplinary way. The various specialists of risk components (Geophysicists, Modellers, Geographers, Economists, Sociologists, etc.) work at different scales, and speak a language of their own. Civil defense personel attempt, as best they can, to draw crisis management solutions from each of these components.
Geography, as a generalist science, seems to be the best science to offer a multidisciplinary and integrated approach to risk assessment, providing operationals with solutions to better manage risks and crisis.
The approach adopted in my research is thus to bring together all the components of risk for an integrated assessment : risk assessment and mapping, assessment of perception, implementation of awareness and preparedness programs, feedback on events, advice for risk and crisis management.
About Alexandre Sahal
Specialist in risk assessment and mitigation “and” Geographic Information Systems (GIS, cartography), Alexandre Sahal, Doctor in Geography from the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, advises communities and governments to better manage their territories.
Currently attached to the "Laboratoire de Géographie Physique CNRS de Meudon" (UMR 8591), Alexandre Sahal conducted a PhD thesis about the Tsunami Risk Assessment in Mainland France and its Overseas Territories in the Indian Ocean (La Reunion Island, Mayotte) and the Pacific Ocean (New-Caledonia, Wallis-and-Futuna) at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. This multidisciplinary thesis consists in an integrated tsunami risk assessment, covering fields of the historical study of the hazard, modeling, mapping the stakes and assessing their potential damages (risk scenarios), but also the implementation of intervention plans and preparedness campains for civilians (perception studies, evacuation simulations). This PhD thesis was written as an integral part of the research program “PREPARTOI;” (www.prepartoi.fr).
Alexandre Sahal's research on tsunami risk is mainly funded by the MAIF Foundation, the French Secretary of State for Overseas Territories, the French National Commission for UNESCO and the ANR MAREMOTI (RiskNat ANR-08-RISKNAT-005-01/MAREMOTI).
