L’information sur les risques majeurs à l’échelle communale

Abstract

In France, the municipalities exposed to major risks have the legal obligation to inform citizens through a document named DICRIM [Document d’Information Communale sur les Risques Majeurs in French]. This tool aims at informing population on the nature, occurrence and spatial distribution of local risks and also at giving safety instructions and behaviors individuals have to adopt in case of a severe event. But only a few percent of the 27 754 exposed municipalities answers to such obligation: 8% according to the BD-DICRIM data base; 20% according to the data advanced by the French Ministry of Environment. To further assess the number of real DICRIM and to explain why most municipalities neglect the law, a phone survey has been carried out on four departments (Loire, Loiret, Loire-Atlantique and Vaucluse) chosen as studied sites. The 727 answers permit to: 1) quantify the gap between official data and reality; 2) measure explicative role on the DICRIM state-of-art of institutional factors (membership in a links between local authorities, realization of a management plan face to crisis, the Plan Communal de Sauvegarde in French) or geographical (number of risks at local scales, proximity to a major river) and demographic variables (importance of the population); 3) to verify the conformity of collected DICRIM in front of the legislation.

Keywords

• municipality
• local government
• prevention
• major risk
• volunteered geographic information