Optimize Anticipation and Decision Making in Extreme Crises to Sustain the Resilience of Society – APRIL

APRIL is focuses on the :
- Capitalization of the management experience of IRMA, MARIA and JOSE primarily on the basis of interviews, to provide recommendations of best practices and methodologies to implement on a short-term (emergency phase) and medium / long-term (territorial reconstruction) anticipation), during future extraordinary events and thus improve ORSEC planning;
- Production of decision support tools (decision support system and representation of decision parameters via heuristic mapping) that assess the different components of a territory's vulnerability, uncertainties and anticipation of protection and remediation measures to maximize the short- and medium-term resilience of the territory.

The main objective of the APRIL project is to improve the analysis capacity of public and private, crisis management stakeholders in their decision-making.

APRIL proposes to involve civil security and crisis management actors. A simulation with a selection of crisis stakeholders will be organized at the end of the project and will notably test the proposed anticipation method. More generally, the results of the APRIL project will be widely disseminated by means of training and they will be made available to the public authorities via the monitoring committee made up of professionals in the field of civil security and crisis management associated to the APRIL project. This committee will ensure that the research carried out in the APRIL project addresses specific operational issues and contribute to the implementation of measures and to the improvement of the current guidelines.

1. The EchoGéo magazine, special edition on «hurricane management«. The title of the article: «The anticipation / decision couple grappling with the exceptional, the unforeseen and the uncertainty«. Article submitted end of March 2019;
2. The Newsletter on Risks and Crises (LIREC), INHESJ: N ° 60 - sep. 2019. Title of the article: «Integrating anticipation into the decision-making process in extreme crisis situations: from the event to the methodology«
3. The Annale des Mines« Responsabilité et Environnement« journal to be published early 2020. Title of the article: «Exploitation of feedback as a tool to improve anticipation«.

Faced with increasingly numerous, complex and non-standard crises, putting the populations under hazardous situations and vital issues, public and private organizations face a major challenge: "How to optimize decision-making under uncertainty and how to anticipate the reconstruction and restoration of a territory?”

On the basis of the last cyclonic season in the Caribbean, the APRIL project will put into perspective the impact of hot decisions, based on evolving and partial knowledge, on the maintenance of the resilience of the territory in the short term (“urgency resilience”) and the medium term (“territory recovery”). Particular emphasis will be placed on anticipation and decision making under uncertainties related to meteorological forecasts, socio-economic dimensions of the territory (vital networks, insurance context, legal, economic context, precarious populations, insularity, etc.). All levels of the ORSEC plan will be considered from the town to the interministerial level.

APRIL will pursue two major goals:
- Capitalize the experience of IRMA, MARIA and JOSE on the basis of surveys to provide practical recommendations and methodologies to implement a short-term (emergency) and medium / long-term (reconstruction of territory) for future extraordinary events and improve ORSEC planning;
- Create decision support tools (Decision support system and representation of decision parameters via heuristic mapping) that assess the various components of a territory's vulnerability, uncertainties and anticipate cross-cutting protection and remediation measures to maximize the short- and medium-term resilience of the territory.

Beyond its "research and development" components, APRIL proposes to implement, as soon as the project is implemented, a transfer of results to civil security and crisis management actors. A table exercice of the current staff will be organized at the end of the project and will notably enable to test the proposed anticipation method. More generally, the results of the APRIL project will be widely disseminated to the various training institutions of the State's executives and made available to the public authorities through the advisory committee made up of professionals from civil security and crisis management. This committee will ensure that the research conducted in the APRIL project responds to operational issues and finds an echo in the implementation of concrete measures and the evolution of doctrines.

APRIL is a research-action project and is positioned as such in a framework of experimental development.