SENAT
Report n° 117 (2007-2008) by M. Roland COURTEAU, Senator (for the parliament office for the evaluation of scientific and technological choices) - Appendix to the minutes of the 7 December 2007 session
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c) At the local level, a real raising of public awareness of the tsunami risks
During this study, your rapporteur observed that the level of awareness among politicians with regard to natural risks increased in proportion to their proximity to the population. Despite all the noise, tsunami-risk prevention hardly seems to be a national priority, as evidenced by the past two years of prevarication in attempting to finalize the official French position. However, this subject has generated real political involvement at the local level, essentially in response to the high level of public interest.
The policies pursued by the departmental councils of the Alpes-Maritimes and Martinique illustrate the desire of the local governments to protect against natural risks.
The Alpes-Maritimes département is threatened by most natural risks, from forest fires to avalanches, to landslides, droughts, earthquakes, tsunamis and inundations. At the behest of its president, Christian Estrosi, the departmental council launched a programme for natural-risk prevention, with an emphasis on geophysical risks and the aim of creating a departmental competitiveness cluster, transforming the area's dangerous geological situation into a motor of economic development.
In this context, an agreement was signed in 2003 between the departmental council of the Alpes-Maritimes and the "University Think Tank for an Environmental Risk Agency" Scientific Interest Group (or GIS CURARE) 51 ( * ) . This body's mission is to demonstrate the pertinence of gathering together the scientific and technical skills in the environmental and natural-risk domain in order to better analyze and understand the environmental phenomena and meet both public demand and government orders. This project, which comes to an end in December 2007, should facilitate the creation of a natural-risk competitiveness cluster for first the Alpes-Maritimes and then the entire Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region (PACA); it also prefigures the future environmental-risk agency, to be created in 2008 and which is meant to be solicited by those companies having to undertake assessments in this region and, more generally, within the entire Arco Latino. Indeed, the Languedoc-Roussillon region is also concerned by the creation of this agency, and its relations already developed with the Italian and Spanish environmental-risk agencies hint at the rapid development of a recognized expertise in geological risks for the Mediterranean area.
Since its launch, the GIS CURARE has centred its attention on three sets of issues, including that of tsunamis and landslides in the sea or ocean. 52 ( * ) The objective was to precisely locate the active underwater faults and zones prone to landslides, in order to quantify the likely landslide volumes and model the importance of the resulting local tsunamis. These studies, half funded by the departmental council, have therefore improved our understanding of this hazard in a zone particularly prone to local tsunamis generated by landslides.
Furthermore, following the Sumatra tsunami, the president of the Alpes-Maritimes departmental council requested the GIS CURARE to organize for the end of February 2005 an international conference on "Creating a tsunami warning network for the western Mediterranean". During this conference, Christian Estrosi emphasized the need to set up a Mediterranean warning system. Following the conference and due to the involvement of the GIS CURARE in actions organized by the French delegation in preparation for the ICG/NEAMTWS meetings, the director of the GIS CURARE was chosen as the national contact for the Mediterranean/Northeast Atlantic zone by the president of the National Committee for the IOC.
Finally, the organization of the second session of the ICG/NEAMTWS by France in May 2006 demonstrated the political will of this country to rapidly succeed in setting up a tsunami warning system for the Mediterranean. In addition, this meeting was held in Nice because of the strong commitment of the departmental council's president - at the time Minister for Regional Development - in favour of such a system.
During his visit to Martinique , your rapporteur observed that the departmental council of this département , presided over by our colleague Claude Lise, was also very active in natural-risk prevention.
Firstly, the departmental council supported the creation of Martinique's geographical information system: a geographical database consisting of digitized maps, scanned photos, all types of measurement taken in real time, land surveys, socio-economic and town-planning information, etc. and meant to be used as a tool in risk management and regional development. This database can thus be used to map the submersion risk in the event of a tsunami for the coastline of a specific district by superimposing its inundation and cadastral maps. 53 ( * )
Secondly, Martinique's departmental council launched a public-awareness campaign on natural risks via an innovative educational tool: the "major-risk prevention caravan". This caravan, made up of three 25 m² tents, houses exhibitions, educational films on major risks, a multimedia quiz and a multimedia game for children aged 6 to 12. As regards the information provided on tsunamis, one of the films presents the earthquake of 26 December 2004 and the tsunami which followed, using first-hand accounts and scientific documents. Visitors can also watch a computer model developed by CEA.
Finally, the departmental council is setting up an extensive network of measuring devices (wave recorders, weather stations, accelerometers) in order to better understand and monitor natural risks. It has also set up a tide gauge at Le Prêcheur to be used for tsunami monitoring, although its principal mission is to study sea surges during storm surges. The council also plans on installing a second tide gauge on the Atlantic coast in the district of Le François.
* 51 The GIS CURARE initially consisted of 5 members: Nice Sophia Antipolis University, Pierre and Marie Curie University, the CNRS, the Institut de Recherche et Developement (IRD), and the private company ACRI ST. BRGM, IFREMER and SHOM later joined this project, as did the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers ("National School of Engineering and Technology").
* 52 The two other themes concerned gravitational instabilities and landslides in the High Tinée Valley and the estimation of strong movements during major coastal earthquakes.
* 53 However, your rapporteur would like to point out that no reliable inundation map can currently be produced for the West Indies, insofar as the tsunami models suffer from the absence of a precise bathymetry for the zone extending from 0 to 200 m all around the French West Indies.