RICOCHET

RICOCHET addresses both basic/fundamental scientific questions and their societal applications. The financing instrument (PRCE: Research projects collaborative – Enterprise) supporting the project RICOCHET should allow us to develop and strengthen collaborations between the academic research and the socio-economic worlds. RICOCHET addresses the management of coastal territories that are highly exposed to CC related hazards because of their geographical position, between land and ocean. Along this particular domain, hazards come from coastal erosion and submersion as well as from flooding, flash floods, and landslides. More specifically, due to global/local environmental and societal changes, the project also considers environments issues requiring population relocation. RICOCHET involves both territory/risk managers working on societal needs and scientists, for improving the understanding of coastal dynamics from a global point of view. For this purpose, coastal areas sensitive to cliff recession and to continental flooding but also to demographic pressures are analysed. The project has 3 main objectives: 1) Understanding the present-day Land/Sea continuum dynamics (beach/cliff/hinterland) and assessment of the sedimentary balance along-shore and from continental; 2) Definition of multi-sectorial impact induced by GC (climate, environmental and social/economic changes), e.g., impacts of the increase of storms frequency and SLR on the cliff-beach system functioning. 3) Supporting the stakeholders and politics in their apprehension and questioning about the impacts of GC on coastal territories to provide them with tools to adopt sustainable coastal management strategies. Highly based on interactions of continental and coastal processes, our approach will consist in developing an integrated risk assessment (multi-hazard and multi-risk analysis). Results will provide risk communication tools, and decision/management tools for the risk management of seashore cliffs environments. Project is remarkable in 2 respects. Firstly, the originality and the particularity of the project consist in the choice of a specific type of coast (coastal cliffs and slopes subjected to fast retreat). Indeed, these territories require more than other type of coast, to consider the interactions of continental and marine processes. Secondly, the project will consider the cascade effects and chains of impacts for a global risk assessment. Because, these processes affect several sectors (agricultural areas, industrial structures, individual houses and tourism infrastructures…), an economic analysis will be conducted to analyse acceptable and sustainable management strategies for a better management and risk prevention in coastal areas. Methodological and technological innovations of RICOCHET come from the use and development of novel methods to monitor the coastal dynamics (physical processes and planning) and tools to evaluate and manage impacts. These are complementary aspects which should provide multi-temporal, multi-scale, and multi-sensor data for a better risk management. A multi-sectoral economic analysis, as well as territorial development proposals will provide the transfer of the scientific advances towards the public services to enhance the adopted strategies for the risk reduction/adjustment. This knowledge transfer will also be effective by the delivery of a diagnostic tool that could be directly integrated in the State services systems. This tool will be designed in order to be exploitable to other regions affected by these concerns. Valorisation of the results will also be done following these 2 axes: academic valorisation through publications (International Refereed Journals with high impact factors) and communications in congress, and technical and industrial valorisation, thanks to the knowledge transfer that will allow the enterprises to be more active on new markets and new products related to decision support systems and guidelines.