How do we (actually) process a flash-flood warning ? Thinking the distance, or the “place of geographers”. ; How do we (actually) process a flash-flood warning ? Thinking the distance, or the “place of geographers”.: Case study : flash-flood warning in the Gard département, South of France

Session : Social Geography of Risk: Which Approaches? ORGANIZERS: Pierpaolo Mudu (WHO – Rome E&H) – Elise Beck (University of Grenoble – Geography Department) ; During our PhD, we sought to understand the concrete manner the stakeholders process a flash-flood warning, thanks to a pragmatic, integrated (from weather forecasters to the riverside resident) and symmetric approach . Defining the warning as the socio-technical process that transforms perceived environmental phenomena into relevant signs of threat, and provides some time for protective actions, we paid a particular attention on its collective and interpretative dimensions. With M. Lussault , we consider that distance is one of the fundamental problems which societies had to manage, through social and spatial practices. So, we assume that the warning process may be understood as a “distance game”. Focusing on the stakeholders practices, we identified in the warning process several types of distance problems, distance practices and distance technologies. In this paper, we will show that this warning process relies both on a relationship with the environment and on the relationships within the social organization. Then it appears that we actually need a cross-analysis of the flash-floods phenomenon, the territory specificities, the politics impacts, the social organization and the technologies characteristics, in order to understand how stakeholders deal with the distance problems, practices and technologies. In this purpose, our work should be understand as a first step, opening a few leads for future research. Anyway, thanks to their central position in this field, geographers may be the spearhead of a new intelligence of the way we manage the risks, rather than of the risks themselves.