Context & background
Local authorities of Grenoble and adjacent territories have launched a long-term initiative entitled l’Atelier des Futurs. Its goal is to reconsider public action with regard to the complexity of current and coming issues (social, economic, environmental) and often contradictory injunctions between the urgencies of the short term and the uncertainties of the long term. To be able to better understand the changes linked to the climate and social degradations, and the associated public action methods, to share knowledge and experiences: these are the expectations expressed by elected officials faced with the complexity of territorial issues.
The first concrete action launched within l’Atelier des Futurs is concerned with the creation of an annual “Local Risk Report” for the area (about 500,000 inhabitants), nicknamed RARRe (Rapport annuel sur les risques et la résilience dans la région Grenobloise). The idea of this action is to identify vulnerabilities and especially, systemic links between them, as well as attenuation or preparation measures, on an annual basis, inspired by the Davos Economic Forum’s annual Global Risk report. The first edition of the report was published in 2024 [1].
Objectives of the project
The RARRe consists of two main parts. One part is dedicated to the description of 44 risks, grouped together in 6 families, ranging from climate-related risks to risks concerning social cohesion, the satisfaction of social needs, economic activities, and so forth. The other part summarizes the findings obtained through a survey among residents, elected officials, and entrepreneurs, on their perception of these risks.
In the first edition of the RARRe, risks were described mostly individually, occasionally mentioning links between different risks. The objective of this project is to model and visualize links between risks, to adequately represent the systemic natures of risks [2].
Description of work
The proposed methodology is as follows, see also [3] for a similar approach:
- To hold a few interviews (at the outset, with lab mates), where participants will be asked to organize the individual risks (represented by printed out cards) on a large sheet of paper and to draw links between them that they perceive as significant (links indicating that the occurrence of one risk may trigger another one). The setup resembles the well-known fresque du climat (climate fresco) and similar serious games. This activity can be done individually or in small groups.
- The outcome of each such activity is “digitized”, i.e. transferred (manually) to some appropriate numerical format (such as an Excel sheet).
- Develop a tool to perform a simple statistical analysis of the different data instances created this way, in order to reveal the most significant systemic links.
- Development of software or plugins allowing to interactively visualize the risks and the links between them.
Steps 3 and 4 entail software development.
References
[1] Rapport annuel sur les risques et la résilience (RARRe) dans l’aire grenobloise, 2024, https://www.aurg.fr/10969-rarre.htm
[2] S. Helbing, Systemic Risks in Society and Economics, in Social Self-Organization (ed. S. Helbing), Springer, 2012 (see also: https://irgc.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Systemic_Risks_Helbing2.pdf)
[3] Global Risks Report, World Economic Forum, 2024, https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2024/
Profile and how to apply
This project is suited for students with some experience in programming, especially related to visualization.
If interested, please contact peter.sturm@inria.fr (including a CV).
