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PhD student in social learning and support for marine submersion risk manager

Employer
Global Academy Jobs
Location
France
Closing date
Mar 20, 2019

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Job Details

Job description

In February 2010, the French Atlantic coast experienced a submersion event caused by storm Xynthia (Bertin et al., 2014). The catastrophic consequences of the event highlighted the limits of risk prevention policies at the French, but also regional and local levels. This crisis has revealed the lack of information for the population in the warning system, the lack of management of the state of the dikes, and the inadequacy or misapplication of risk prevention plans. the communal scale. Indeed, decisions taken before, but also during the event, aggravated the situation, revealing a lack of culture of risk, leading to individual and collective choices that proved problematic. The consequences of Xynthia have led scientists to consider more the need to bridge the gaps between knowledge produced and mastered by researchers and those mobilized and known by managers of coastal risks. This finding is reinforced by the low political agenda, until recent years, of adaptation strategies that coastal territories could develop in the face of the consequences of climate change (rising sea levels and increased frequency and the intensity of extreme weather events).

Companies have built "hard" defense works against submergence (dikes), both for the purpose of gaining land on the sea and for protecting it from it. Yet other types of defenses exist. For example, the so-called "soft" modes reinforce the height and solidity of the dunes, the so-called "strategic withdrawal" policies encourage the relocation of newly exposed populations to the interior and the "return to the sea" of the lands. formerly won over the sea. These various defense strategies question both social (urbanization and economy of coastal zones), ecological (maintaining ecosystems, coastline and biodiversity) and landscape (coastal artificialization) issues.

Participatory simulation is an approach that combines modeling and participatory approaches to produce learning about an environmental issue (Becu et al., 2014, 2015). It is implemented in the form of collective simulation workshops combining both direct relationships between participants (negotiation, opposition, conciliation) and interactions with a computer simulator modeling the main environmental processes related to the problem ( eg renewal of resources, ecological status, hydrological dynamics). LittoSIM is a participatory simulation device developed in 2015 and 2016 for the island of Oleron (Becu et al., 2016) and deployed on the island in 2017 ( https://littosim.hypotheses.org ). The LittoSIM-GEN project follows this experiment and tests the device with other communities with contrasting situations.

Details
  • Workplace: CNRS laboratory Littoral, Environment and Societies (LINKS UMR7266) in La Rochelle - travel in France to predict
  • Funding and duration: CNRS (on New Aquitaine Region project), 36 months
  • Inscription: section 23 of the CNU (Geography); EUCLIDE doctoral school, University of La Rochelle.
  • Facilities: Collective infrastructures and scientific environment of the laboratory Littoral, Environments and Societies (LIENSS) of La Rochelle and the laboratory Cities, Territories, Environments and Societies (CITERES) of Tours, CNRS / University research infrastructures (lab seminars, academic infrastructures: library, doctoral seminars, etc ...).


The thesis is part of the research project "LittoSIM-GEN - Development of a generic device to raise awareness of alternative measures to prevent the risk of marine submersion for local authorities" funded by the Fondation de France and the Nouvelle region Aquitaine. It focuses on the evaluation of the LittoSIM participatory simulation system in terms of sensitizing local elected officials and territorial agents to the definition of a strategy for risk prevention and the taking into account of climate change.

The doctoral student will work on the implementation of the scheme with several local authorities and will measure the social learning produced by the managers participating in the workshops.

The results will be used to evaluate the effects of the device in contrasting situations and to assess how a risk culture is created among community workers.

Objectives

The PhD student will work on the implementation of the simulation system with the different metropolitan territorial authorities selected for the LittoSIM-GEN project. It will be in charge of validating the implementation protocol and evaluating the process by measuring the effects of the workshops on the participants. This implementation and its evaluation will involve a qualitative and quantitative survey of participants, and the development of learning indicators and capabilities that can then be incorporated into the system. These "real-time" indicators will make it possible to describe more precisely what local elected representatives and technicians are learning in the workshops, how their opinion evolves about alternative measures to prevent the risk of submersion, and finally how the LittoSIM device helps them in defining a sustainable risk prevention strategy?
  • Based on the work already done in Oléron, the PhD student will be responsible for continuing the state of the art on risk culture, alternative risk management measures and social learning. (social learning) and capabilities.
  • Then, two to three study cases will be selected in collaboration with the consortium of the LittoSIM-Gen research project, on which the doctoral student will carry out an analysis of the context, issues and actors involved.


The organization phase of LittoSIM workshops in situ and the evaluation of learning will then be developed and the evaluation protocol will be tested, adjusted and validated.
  • The results of the thesis will focus on the learning and reception methods of the device according to the different sites studied (hypothesis on territories more or less inclined to innovate), as well as on the effects of the participative device on the sensitization, the acquisition of knowledge and capacity by stakeholders.
  • A reflection on putting these results into perspective on the risk culture and other associated issues will be proposed at the end of the thesis.

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