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Paper short abstract:

This presentation aims to define and understand the mechanisms actors use to construct their own geotools in order to build a risk management system in Haiti.

Paper long abstract:

Managing « natural » risks is seen as a major systemic issue to improve, in the long-term, living conditions of communities, especially of the most vulnerable ones. Methods and models are produced by international agencies such as UNISDR to help INGOs and local institutions to manage risks. Among them, geotools are defined as neutral and scientific tools. However, the proliferation of actors who gather around those projects create frictions.

Taking actors' critics as a starting point, my approach aims to highlight the mechanisms that risks managers use to construct innovations they need to build a risk management system in Haiti. The actors critics show that their resources such as status, networks, technical knowledge, funds and accessibility to information allow them to constantly re-define and co-construct the uses and productions of geodata. The ability of both producers and users to play a role in the construction and in the application of geotools not only depends on their actual resources but also on their ability to keep or acquire new resources accordingly to the geopolitical context.

Despite the negotiations, conflicts, alliances and compromises that actors do, these tools are still seen as neutral and scientific in reports. This de-politization of geotools allows some of them to express their critics out loud to have an effective effect on the definition of risk management while others have to express it off the records.