Comparer les tempêtessur le temps long en quantifiant les dommages : proposition d’un nouvel outil

Abstract

There are many ways to assessing and classifying recent and past storms from mid-latitudes. None, however, achieved consensus and important criticisms can be addressed to them. Moreover, the difficulty to study storms before the second half of the 20th century and the adoption of specific atmospheric analysis means (satellites, models) justifies working on the establishment of a new tool to initiate the comparison between past and current storms. This work proposes a) a new approach to quantify damage of 14th-18th centuries storms, b) an application with discussion of the limits, c) a reflection on the construction of a storm assessment prototype through the theorization of a scale intensity. By combining the estimation of the importance of the damage and the spatial framework, this method leads to a “reasoned” coding, less subjective, with reduction of the risks of over or underestimate. Applied here for storms and sea floods occurred in western France in the 14th-18th centuries, the intensity assessment indicator has been designed to be flexible and adaptable on a larger scale, both spatially and temporally.

Keywords

• Methodology
• Quantification
• Intensity indicator
• Classification