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2014 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

12. Understanding the Warning Process Through the Lens of Practice: Emancipation as a Condition of Action–Some Lessons from France

Author : Laurence Créton-Cazanave

Published in: Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems For Climate Change

Publisher: Springer Netherlands

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Abstract

Above and beyond the instruments, technical and procedural, which can be implemented to plan an EWS, it is useful to consider warning as an action process from the perspective of its practical implementation by the actors on the ground. In this case, it appears that the actors – however well-intentioned – often encounter a problem that seems insuperable: in risk situations, they have to manage and consider an ever-growing number of ‘things’ (or entities) that can literally ‘paralyse’ action. The number of entities to take into account in fact proves much larger than just the components of the EWS and represents a real headache for the people involved. Through an in-depth analysis of the practices of the actors in the flash flood warning process in the Vidourle catchment, this chapter identifies a strategy for managing this – the detour – which illustrates ‘emancipation’ practices.

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previous chapter The Evolution of Kenya’s Drought Management System

next chapter The Effect of Early Flood Warnings on Mitigation and Recovery During the 2010 Pakistan Floods

Doctoral research at UMR Pacte-Territoires, Université de Grenoble, France. Advisors: O. Soubeyran, C. Lutoff. Funds: Région Rhône-Alpes, cf. Créton-Cazanave (2010).

The thesis explored – both – specificities and common points between the different actors’ practices during the warning process. In this chapter, we will concentrate on one common problem they all face, because it seems important to me to highlight that some action stakes – beyond all kinds of specificities – may be shared through the whole warning process. For more detailed analysis, the reader may refer to the thesis (Créton-Cazanave 2010), or for an overview (Créton-Cazanave and Lutoff 2013).

As we will see later, entities may be human or non-human elements, that are to be understood as being part of the world of action. The notion is correlated with Science and Technology Studies, and especially Latour’s and Callon’s works, that try to go beyond the traditional division between nature and culture, non-human and human actors.

The need for a human face to help interpret and mediate this proliferation of information (like a ‘decoder’, see next section) is also found by researches in the UK that highlights the value added by Public Weather Service Advisors, who serve a mediating role, putting a human face on Met Office forecasts. They are hugely popular amongst UK emergency responders (Demeritt 2012).

For further discussion of this issue and its implications for modelling and risk assessment, see Demeritt and Wainwright (2005).

K.E. Weick has shown how the collapse of sense-making leads to inappropriate actions and then disaster in the case of the Mann Gluch fire in 1949 (Weick 1993).

CMIR: regional scale of Météo-France, which produces forecast at regional scale.

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Title: Understanding the Warning Process Through the Lens of Practice: Emancipation as a Condition of Action–Some Lessons from France
Author: Laurence Créton-Cazanave
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Book: Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems For Climate Change
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-8597-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-94-017-8598-3

Copyright Year: 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8598-3_12