Territorial recovery: levers to anticipate natural disasters – Relev

The Relev project aims to develop a transdisciplinary methodology integrating expertise in natural hazards (geography, civil engineering, geology), urban planning (city planning, architecture) and social sciences (psychology, sociology, history) to improve recovery-management post-disaster. The aims of this project are (1) to develop a method to anticipate the management required for post-disaster recovery at the local city scale, and (2) to integrate natural hazards into the urban planning process leading to economically viable sustainable development. Our objective, build on an innovative integrated approach, is to develop new knowledge on the effectiveness of post-disaster recovery strategies and to strengthen the resilience of cities to natural disasters, and hence climate change. We propose to make studies more interdisciplinary conducted on resilience and adaptation to natural risks in order to make available to local and professional decision makers in urban planning and construction integrated tools to help design sustainable cities and secure urban functioning in the face of natural disasters.
The main hypothesis of this project is that the reconstruction of a disaster territory following a natural disaster represents a window of opportunity to redevelop the territory in a more resilient and sustainable way against future extreme events. The Relev project team assumes that the first sine qua non condition is anticipation of the management of this period. To meet our objective, we develop an integrated and transdisciplinary approach around 3 components:
(1) A state of the art aimed at characterising the diversity of post-disaster reconstruction practices in a territory. The scientific consortium will make a specific effort to realize a post-disaster feedback on the islands of Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy, which have been heavily impacted by Irma Hurricane,
(2) Development of a diagnosis of post-disaster local reconstruction conditions,
(3) Development of a method to assist in the planning of network reconstruction strategies.