Understanding the Warning Process Through the Lens of Practice: Emancipation as a Condition of Action–Some Lessons from France - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 234

Fig. 12.3 Porte du Vidourle Ouest/West Vidourle's Gate

However, it is entirely conditional on the capacity to 'activate' this 'fl ash fl ood AE'
when there is a possibility of fl ooding.
The following case provides a good counterexample: since the reform of the
fl ood forecasting services, forecasters no longer call Voies Navigables de France
(VNF - France's navigable waterways agency) to warn them that water levels on
the Vidourle have reached 2 m at Vic-le-Fesc (the level that triggers their fl ood
response plan, notably the closure of the 'Portes du Vidourle' (see picture Fig. 12.3 )).
VNF therefore has to monitor the hydrographs directly on the Vigie Crue website.
Since they cannot assign someone to this task full time throughout the autumn, they
have developed an algorithm which, from the Vigie Crue website, triggers an alarm
when the water level rises to 2 m. However, there are still too many doubts about the
algorithm, about their Internet connection and about the data (the Vic-le-Fesc
sensor has been off-line for a long time), and they still worry that they may not acti-
vate their fl ood response plan in time. So fi nally, when it rains, VNF assigns an
employee to monitor Vigie Crue, even though most of the time nothing happens! In
other words, doubt about the possibility of an ad hoc activation makes emancipa-
tion from the problem impossible .
This capacity for activation is, therefore, what gives emancipation vehicles their
power. To return to the example of the fi rm XX, the mayor who has to manage his