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Recent years have been marked by a strong popular and political mobilization around climate change. However, to what extent does this mobilization lead to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or the vulnerability of our society to the effects of climate change? This question is at the heart of the research presented, which sought to identify the barriers and levers to the integration of climate issues into urban planning of Swiss cities. The literature review first situates the integration of climate change in Swiss cities in relation to the evolution of practices at the international level. It emerged that Swiss cities have generally been late in integrating climate issues into their public policies. Practices still focus strongly on energy policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but adaptation measures in urban planning are poorly implemented. In order to better understand the reasons for this slow and late integration of climate change into urban planning of Swiss cities, a survey was conducted among more than 200 professionals. It showed that the evolution of practices is generally driven by “pioneering” actors who are strongly mobilized by personal values and who use specialized and scientific sources of information. Finally, two focus groups with representative professionals were organized in order to deepen the barriers and levers observed and to formulate sound recommendations for integrating the climate issue into urban planning. Two lines of action emerged: prioritization (strengthening legal frameworks and organizational structures) and support (training and involvement of climate experts at all stages of urban planning).

The gradual institutionalization of public participation increasingly compels local authorities to partially share their power over the transformation of urban areas. The smooth running of a participatory session is based on selecting the appropriate type of interaction, or medium, which supports the local authorities to reach and interact with a targeted public. However, local authorities often appear unfamiliar with the organization of interactive sessions with the population. This article introduces an evaluation framework that focuses on the access conditions of participants to the sessions of interaction. This novel perspective aspires to assist the local authorities in their decision to adopt a participatory medium (or method of interaction). Seven dimensions are investigated to this aim, namely accessibility, availability, adequacy, affordability, acceptability, awareness, and attractiveness (the last dimension is introduced in this article). In light of two real case scenarios that occurred in Western Switzerland, the use of the access framework is investigated for two potential purposes: (1) supporting the choice of a medium for an interactive session according to the urban project’s context and the targeted public, and (2) improving future participatory approaches by assessing the representativeness of participants attending a past session in comparison to the originally targeted public.

This paper presents a platform aiming the ease of the debate between citizens. In the early 2010’ies, governments are seeking new ways to be more accountable and transparent towards their citizens; marking a renewal in public participation. In return, citizens are eager to be heard and to use new tools based on information and communication technologies (ICT) like the web 2.0. This public’s empowerment presents some costs for the authorities who are mainly concerned with the loss of decision making power. To face those challenges, several 2D online maps have been developed to help the governments to direct and centralize citizens insights. Those previous collaborating mapping tools helped to identify the characteristics of a reliable platform : user-friendly, simple and accessible (anywhere at any time). In our implementation, we adopted the third dimension which provides numerous benefits : 1. a more effective and effortless visualization, 2. An unbiased representation of the environment, 3. The merge of the participant cognition spaces. From our past experiences, we conceptualized the actors (citizens / facilitator / transcriber) interactions and dynamics in public engagement on-site meeting. From this approach, we evaluated how the utilization of a 3D virtual environment as the support of the participation will reshape and enhance the relation synergies between the actors : 1. Centralization of the interactions within the platform, 2. Automated analysis from the gathered raw information, 3. Reachability of a larger part of the population, 4. Lightening of the participatory processes.

Groundwater is the primary source of drinking water for small municipalities and individuals. However, groundwater can be polluted by almost any land use. Consequently, many governments have acquired groundwater information in the aim of protecting the resource. Nevertheless, the resulting data are often ill-fitted to planning needs. In a previous study, a method was developed to help planners interpret hydrogeological data. It combines land planning and hydrogeological data through multicriteria analysis, in order to obtain groundwater contamination risk maps. The method proved efficient and useful. However, it could not be easily implemented by land planners, who do not always have training with these types of data and geographical information system (GIS). This paper presents how the method was integrated into a web-based interface called Aménagement du Territoire et Eau Souterraine (ATES). ATES allows planners to view groundwater basic maps, evaluate the present contamination risk for groundwater, and analyse new planning scenarios. ATES also suggests mitigation measures and offers tools to discuss the possible solutions. The tool has been developed, tested and validated with land planners. To our knowledge, it is the first geo-informatics tool developed especially for planners that aims at facilitating the incorporation of groundwater into planning. Moreover, an innovative approach called MACBETH was used for data aggregation, a novelty in groundwater management and spatial data integration.

Predicted climate change may significantly affect drinking water supply in urban areas. Local water stakeholders facing climate change will have to deal with uncertain information and unexpected events. To address this lack of data, the knowledge and experience of practitioners might be used to assess the potential impacts of climate change on different issues, including drinking water supply. This paper proposes a participatory approach to identify local issues associated with drinking water supply (from source to tap) in a climate change context. This approach relies on the experience and knowledge of local practitioners. The proposed approach was applied to the Québec City metropolitan area (Province of Quebec, Canada). It is based on assignment examples (in this case, a selected set of districts from the study territory) in order to generalize application to the entire territory. This approach helps stakeholders to rationally consider different dimensions and the complexity of drinking water supply.

Background In 2007, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) initiated the Global plan of action for Farm Animal Genetic Resources (FAnGR). The main goal of this plan is to reduce further loss of genetic diversity in farm animals, so as to protect and promote the diversity of farm animal resources. An important step to reach this goal is to monitor and prioritize endangered breeds in the context of conservation programs. Methodology/Web portal implementation The GENMON WebGIS platform is able to monitor FAnGR and to evaluate the degree of endangerment of livestock breeds. The system takes into account pedigree and introgression information, the geographical concentration of animals, the cryo-conservation plan and the sustainability of breeding activities based on socio-economic data as well as present and future land use conditions. A multi-criteria decision tool supports the aggregation of the multi-thematic indices mentioned above using the MACBETH method, which is based on a weighted average using satisfaction thresholds. GENMON is a monitoring tool to reach subjective decisions made by a government agency. It relies on open source software and is available at http://lasigsrv2.epfl.ch/genmon-ch. Results/Significance GENMON allows users to upload pedigree-information (animal ID, parents, birthdate, sex, location and introgression) from a specific livestock breed and to define species and/or region-specific weighting parameters and thresholds. The program then completes a pedigree analysis and derives several indices that are used to calculate an integrated score of conservation prioritization for the breeds under investigation. The score can be visualized on a geographic map and allows a fast, intuitive and regional identification of breeds in danger. Appropriate conservation actions and breeding programs can thus be undertaken in order to promote the recovery of the genetic diversity in livestock breeds in need. The use of the platform is illustrated by means of an example based on three local livestock breeds from different species in Switzerland.

WOS:000365357400001; International audience; For mid-latitude cities, higher summer temperatures due to climate change are a cause for concern because they aggravate the urban heat island phenomenon and reduce thermal comfort inside buildings. By acquiring the appropriate knowledge and skills, architects and urban designers can become key actors in adaptation to climate change. Two workshops bringing together architects and urban designers provided evidence of deficiencies in this area. We hypothesize that a design support tool (DST) focused on the issue of adaptation of mid-latitude cities to rising summer temperatures could help improve knowledge and skills of professionals in the field. The first section presents the results taken from a review and classification of DSTs, which highlight the tools' features that are likely to reach this goal. Tools of the "hybrid" category seem most appropriate. To verify this, seven DSTs were selected and tested by fourteen students enrolled in a graduate-level architecture design studio. The second section presents the results from this test, including an analysis of the final projects, a web-based questionnaire and two focus groups. The relevance of hybrid approaches is established, but the results bring into question the capacity of a single DST to meet the individual and multiple needs of professionals.