How do we (actually) process a flash-flood warning ? Thinking the distance, or the "place of geographers",: Case study : flash-flood warning in the Gard Department, South of France

Defining the warning as the socio-technical process that transforms perceived environmental phenomena into relevant signs of threat, and provides some time for protective actions, we paid a particular attention on its collective and interpretative dimensions. With Lussault (2007), we consider that distance is one of the fundamental problems which societies had to manage, through social and spatial practices. So, we assume that the warning process may be understood as a "distance game". Focusing on the stakeholders practices, we identified in the warning process several types of distance problems, distance practices and distance technologies. In this presentation, we show that this warning process relies both on a relationship with the environment and on the relationships within the social organization. Then it appears that we actually need a cross-analysis of the phenomenon (the flash-floods in our example), the territory specificities, the politics impacts, the social organization and the technologies characteristics, in order to understand how stakeholders deal with the distance problems, practices and technologies