D57 Land Planning User Evaluation Report – ACRI-ST

At regional level RETINA alps laboratory was used as a demonstration project that led to the constitution of a Scientific Interest Group called CURARE (http://curare.unice.fr/) financed by local authorities to help them take decisions in management of multi hazard risk especially earthquake and landslide. The founders of CURARE are partners of RETINA (GEOSCIENCES AZUR through UNSA, CNRS, IRD, UPMC and ACRI-ST). The long-term aim of GIS CURARE is to create a Environmental Risk Agency (ARE) and to extend its skills to Mediterranean and European countries.

The outcome of RETINA was the supporting evidence of the interest of creating a local agency in charge of gathering state of the art data and methodologies to improve decision support system. It was decided that the first phase, which is the feasibility study, be closely associated with research organisations, the representative of the grouping being the University of Nice Sophia-Antipolis.

This scientific grouping took a major role in the labelisation process of the “Pôles de compétitivité” (competitiveness poles) in France in July 2005 as our Region was the only one to be awarded this title for “Risk and territories vulnerabilities” demonstrating the strong local interest and competencies in this field. Environmental risk including natural risks are key elements of this newly founded structure where ACRI-ST and GEOAZUR are board members. Projects like C.I.T.E (International Centre of Environmental Technologies and Expert

support, supported by the Délégation à l’Aménagement du Territoire et à l’Action Régionale, the Conseil Général of the Alpes Maritimes and the Côte d’Azur HiTech club) and CEMER (Euro-Mediteranean Centre for Environment and Risks) identified by the Préfecture de Region in Marseille as key components for the development of the Pole makes strong reference to RETINA

The extension toward tsunami studies for improving near real time alert system that led to a symposium organised in February 2005 by the President of Conseil Général of the Alpes Maritimes (today minister in charge of territorial planning) was also a direct outcome of RETINA

RETINA, now followed by FORESIGHT are also applications supporting secure telecommunication and ad hoc mesh network with intelligent sensors. Numerous IST proposals want to take advantage of the findings of RETINA. This link with the worldwide identified expertise center for “secure communication solutions” in PACA region including Sophia-Antipolis is also well established through the PEARL project (European Platform of Applications and telecommunications for Risks and Environment

).

The level of local authorities implication for best practice in risk and environmental management is obvious as the Préfet des Alpes Maritimes has decided to created a strategic group which monitor progress of existing projects in this field and identify promising projects and synergies, and then again the RETINA and FORESIGHT alps group members are fully integrated in this process.