Diagnosis and stakes of the management of floods in Mediterranean France

Hurried by the severe torrential floods in the French Mediterranean South of France, the state and the local actors reactivated the mitigation of flood risk that had accused a heavy delay. After a cartographic diagnosis of the risk-flooding to the scale of the Mediterranean France, this article explains the present tendencies concerning risk mitigation. The master-word is diversification. It is not anymore about trusting the structural amenities destined to control the risk solely but also to promote the means to control and to reduce the stakes and their vulnerability. In this optic, the attitude of the public powers and decision-makers must change towards the inhabitants. An effort of explanation and dialogue assures a bigger efficiency of the measures adopted. The article finishes by showing the limits of the preventive measures whether they be structural or legislative. The success of risk prevention, that is of durably reducing the human and economic cost of catastrophes, implies thinking about the conciliation between objectives of risk reduction and socioeconomic development. It passes by a decompartmentalization of the territorial settings and the necessity to accelerate the development of the intercommunality.