Territorialiser ou ne pas territorialiser le risque et l’incertitude

This paper aims at addressing the relationships between risk and territoriality, the regionalization in risk management, and the place-based approach, especially when some risks are turning into uncertainty. In the first part, we show that understanding the complex relationship between risk and geographical space is still difficult from a theoretical point of view. In the second part, we underline that, from a practical point of view, risk managers still consider risk as an exogenous phenomenon, exterior to places and societies. Even if place-based risk management is now the basis for public policies concerning risk mitigation and prevention, the dominant approach consists in practice in implementing rules defined at the national level through local procedures. These rules are implemented at the level of administrative districts, which are defined from a hazard-centered perspective. They do not take into account the specificity of the damaging process dynamics or the particularities of local communities. Hence, the local implementation of rules creates conflicts. Plans are rejected or become inefficient. In the third part, we analyse the emergence of new kind of risks and their links with uncertainty. These “new risks” do not stay within the limits of the administrative districts and challenge the mainstream plans. In the fourth part, we illustrate the difficulties created by these risks with the case of the implementation of European directive 2007/60/EC to the metropolitan Parisian area. We discuss the problem of the definition of important flood risk districts, the national strategy and local strategies