Uncertainties management for sustainable decisions – INCERDD

The project INCERDD aims to develop methods taking into account uncertainties in multi-criteria decision-aids for urban planning and management.

Assessment of whole the consequences of decisions in relation to sustainable development is a key point for communities. This assessment must deal with immediate and delayed consequences according to different criteria (immediate cost, profitability, social and environmental impacts...) and take into account large quantities of uncertainties. In fact, uncertainties make the long-term decision consequences assessment more difficult. By necessity, decision makers are led to intuitively manage the complexity without being able to clearly explain the final choice. Complexity may also be reduced by mono-criteria decision aids (cost or profitability for example) in the longer term, since the effects of uncertainty are then smaller.

The project INCERDD aims to develop a methodology and a set of methods to help decision makers by a clarification of uncertainties influence. More specifically, the project intends to assess the consequences of a decision based on different criteria (economic, technical, social, environmental...) with probabilistic or possibilistic approaches. In support of these developments, two application fields are selected in connection with urban planning and management. These fields differ from the scale of the studied system.
• On a "local" scale, i.e. a neighbourhood for example, the project focuses on the problematic of buried networks management (transport, sewerage systems...) with decisions relating to maintenance, renewal, extension or improvement of networks in a context of aging equipment, changing in needs, climate change, urban growth...
• On a "global" scale, i.e. urban area as a whole, the project focuses on the problematic of natural hazard and risk management with decisions relating to hazards mitigation (floods, shrinkage-swelling soil...), vulnerability mitigation, land regulatory (PPR, PLU...).

The project INCERDD considers different uncertainties that may relate to:
- the long-term objectives of community in relation to the number of forces and players (political, technical community, citizens, business community...). Is it possible to define a shared objective for the community and compare different possible strategies of management (particularly in terms of networks and natural hazards management).
- data that characterized the physical environment (What is the current state of the network? What are the construction materials of such buildings? What are the mechanical properties? ...)
- context evolution (changing of population needs, climate changes, budgets evolutions...)
- models and methods used to formalize problems addressed (methods for networks design, hydraulic models, aging models, models for hazards occurrence prediction, methods for vulnerability assessment...).

Consequently, the project INCERDD combines academic research goals on the problematic of uncertainties and operational goals of with the two applications fields (networks and natural hazard management).

The partnership brings together multidisciplinary scientific expertises (economics, sociology, engineering ...) with 7 university or equivalent partners and 3 operational partners : an urban community, an town planning agency planning and a territory planning agency.