Focus Group in Bordeaux, France

Perception of the challenges and threats facing the Bordeaux metropolitan area toward climate change

The 15th February 2024 took place in Bordeaux, France, the CREST Focus Group Résilience des infrastructures urbaines au changement climatique, organized by ACCENT SUD, BSE (Bordeaux school of Economy), CNRS and the laboratory ETTIS of INRAe, moderated by Corinne Plays of CPA, with the role of facilitate the meeting and analyzing the results.

Participants of the focus group meeting: 7 representatives of public and private stakeholders operating in the metropolitan area of Bordeaux and experts in climate change adaptation and infrastructures (political and administrative entities, water infrastructures, security and rescue).

Objective of the Focus Group

An essential part of the research project of CREST is the process of co-creating policies based on a citizen participatory approach. This stage establishes a baseline to better understand the local status quo and to engage communities in identifying the climate resilience challenges that will serve as case studies for co-creation and digital twinning experiments in the three defined European urban areas (pilot sites), including the metropolis of Bordeaux. The purpose of the focus group meeting on the resilience of urban infrastructure to climate change is to select one or more of the main threats posed by climate change to infrastructure in the Bordeaux metropolitan area, and to identify the most vulnerable locations. These elements provide the data needed to visualise future scenarios by using digital twinning technology.

Feedback and discussion on the citizen survey

From September 2023 to February 2024 the Survey Dans quelle mesure votre ville est-elle résiliente au changement climatique ? has been disseminated to the citizens of Bordeaux metropolitan area. The answers have been analyzes and presented by representatives of BSE and ETTIS-INRAe, along with the methodology used, and largely discussed with the focus group participants, with great contribution to our research.

Identifying and prioritizing threats

Because of the high level of expertise of the focus group participants, an engaging discussion took place about the list of main threads and the terminology used in the citizens’ survey, and at the end the hierarchy of the 5 main threats has been defined: flooding, heatwave, rising temperatures, water resources and air quality.

Choice of the “Use case”

The video on CREST website presenting the project and Digital Twin tool, along with the live video presentation of AugmentCity about CREST objectives, how a Digital Twin works, how to select Use Cases and some examples, introduced the discussion among participants about the choice of the use cases, providing valuable insights to the research.