Innovations for Resilience Cluster

When digital giants take care of the poor © Marine AL DAHDAH - CNRS, CEMS, French Institute of Pondichery (India)

Objective

Citizen-centered approach as an alternative to traditional crisis risk management policies (health, Natech, etc.).

Method

Co-design and local implementation of technologies, analysis of risk perception and behavior.

The cluster Innovations for resilience is a multi-disciplinary research group (sociologists, geographers, historians, engineers, climatologists and geo-scientists, hydrologists, architects, physicians, managers, communicators...) involved in understanding the spreading of "people-centered innovations" to make them actors of crisis management and enhance their resilience.

Actually, in a few years, many “smart” innovations explicitly dedicated to different types of crises management or vulnerabilities reduction have been developed by public and private players worldwide in order to integrate public concerned or recognized as concerned. The cluster research mainly tackles smart, decentralized, often small, and “easy-to-use” innovations that for some, benefit from the recent progress of microelectronics and digital industries, from the trend of artificial intelligence and the internet of things. This contributes to widespread agile and economical solutions (small sensors, mobile apps, for example) that, coupled with institutional innovations, are expected to complete or replace institutional and experts centered traditional responses.

Many of these innovations originate in a public-private partnership; they concern many different geographical and political territories; some are market-driven, some are “bottom-up” (emerging from a grass-root innovation process).  The public concerned, the “end-user,” can both appear as a target and a producer of information (Al Dahdah, 2019), sometimes through a community commitment but also as a human virtual or physical sensor (Goodchild, 2007).

A significant issue the cluster addresses is analyzing the extent to which these innovations drive a change in the risks’ governance with a more inclusive perspective.The cluster’s program mainly addresses issues related to:

•     change in design methodologies (users’ centered, frugal, grass-roots innovation) at all stages from idea to prolonged usage with a challenge about the integration of learning from crisis and vulnerability experiences approaches (as recommended in risk cycle management) and long and ordinary existing practices regarding risk phenomenons;
•     legal and public policy dimensions especially privacy regarding data capture, responsibilities’ transfer, and insurance regime implications, market regulations for public stakes (health, natural and industrial risks) and sustainable economic model;
•     change in risks’ expertise role, in experts’ position and capacities of action confronted to the emergence of new actors and possible change in institutional and power relations.

The cluster Innovations for resilience lead research projetcs (master, phd, seniors researchers), in partnerships with different territories, foster new partenerships and provides scientific animation on these topics toward Grenoble research communities but also internationally: Kyoto University-Japan, Swansea University-Wales, Denver Colorado University (USA), the International Center for Frugal Innovation (Delft, Leiden et Rotterdam Universities, Nederland).