Crisis management: Improvement of knowledge and development of a decision aid process

摘要

The major risks which are caused by man-made or natural events are always inherent in our modern societies but their apprehensions have changed at the beginning of the eighties with the first research into the subject. The catastrophic events of previous years such as the industrial disasters in 2001 in France or the various terrorist's attacks have brought about some changes in the concept of risk by integrating dimensions of crisis and threat in a more important way. Nowadays, the European and French policies point out the necessity of improving crisis management in order to deal correctly with these situations and to protect the population. The objective of this study is to propose the development of an expertise usable in a continuous way, to anticipate a trigger event while detecting the warning signals but also to avoid a crisis of great scale by taking into account the aggravating factors. This methodology of decision-making aid will help the decision-makers to anticipate a crisis and also manage a crisis of great scale by the assessment of a crisis potential index. The first part of the paper puts forward the characteristics of a crisis with the aim of increasing the knowledge about this particular situation. Then, the paper presents the different means to learn about a crisis and a case study to illustrate this purpose and the last part will strive to provide the principal phases of the methodology of decision-making aid.