Expert evaluation, a territorialization tool ? functions and uses of socio-economic expert evaluation in the management of floodplains France and England.

Overview & Synopsis

The need to bring public policies closer to areas is most urgent in the domain of environment and particularly when natural hazards occur. If local actors, whether elected or civilians, are to accept and put into practice public actions, the planned measures should agree with area dynamics. This is particularly true in the framework of public policy in land use management of flood areas and policy application is often faced with numerous land use conflicts. In this context we formulate a hypothesis that socio-conomic expert evaluation could provide a means of adapting national standards to a local context by taking into account area characteristics in the process of carrying out pre-emptive measures. The objective of this applied research is to analyse the functions and uses of socio-economic expert evaluation in adapting pre-emptive measures to local characteristics of flood areas. Our research is based on a study of the place and role of the socio-economic expert evaluation in the framework of regulations procedures in France and planning tools in England. The issue of the direction and the effects of the expert evaluation on the territorialization of public policies is the object of our dissertation and leads us to focus not only on the problem of territorialization of public policies but also on the relationship between the ways of producing knowledge and its political use. The first part of this work refers to the understanding of the public policy territorialization process. The first level of analysis is based on the one hand, on the different concepts comprising the territorialization process and on the other, on an analysis of the forms of policy territorializations, the management of land use in France and England. The second part of our research analyses the place and role of the socio-economic expert evaluation in the process of territorialization of town planning policies in flood areas in France and England. We will see what functions what ways of production and finally what uses are assigned in the expert evaluation in the two types of public action: the procedural and the normative. Moreover, it will be shown that the functions and uses of expert evaluation in France and England have been evolving together with a change in technical approach and a more pragmatic vision of flood areas.