BRGM (French Geological Survey)
3 avenue Claude-Guillemin
BP 36009
45060 Orléans Cedex 2 - France
www.brgm.fr

Outline
BRGM is France’s reference public institution for Earth Science applications in the management of
surface and subsurface resources and risks. BRGM (“Bureau de Recherches Géologiques etMinières”) is the French Geological Survey. The key objectives for BRGM are: i) Understanding
geological processes and associated risks; ii) Developing new methodologies and techniques
helpful in geosciences; iii) Producing and disseminating data to support the management of soils,
subsoils and resources; iv) Delivering the necessary tools for the management of soils, subsoils
and their resources, for risk prevention and for policy responses to climate change.
BRGM's activities are organized around its 5 key roles: scientific research; support to public policy
development; international cooperation; mine Safety and training through “ENAG” school.
Scientific research at the BRGM is focused on furthering geological knowledge andunderstanding surface and subsurface phenomena. The key issue at stake is to meet thechallenges of global change. Over 700 BRGM engineers and researchers - two thirds of its staff are involved in scientific research. Support to public policy development covers all expert
appraisals, monitoring and studies such as: surface/subsurface monitoring and disseminatingknowledge; methodological studies and synopses to transfer research results to “civil society”;
independent expert appraisals; and training or knowledge transfer. International cooperation is
also one of the major roles: with over 200 projects each year in more than 40 countries, BRGM
works across the globe towards enduring protection for people and resources. BRGM provides
know-how and expertise in two main areas: i) protecting people and their environment against
natural risks; ii) ensuring the permanence and quality of natural water, mineral and (geothermal)energy resources. Mine Safety, since 2006, has been entrusted to BRGM by the French State.
Monitoring and action to prevent risks and pollution arising from mine closures are part of BRGM’s
missions. BRGM has state delegated responsibility for all mine safety engineering work. Through
ENAG, the BRGM disseminates its scientific competences and techniques through a range ofcourses: higher education diploma courses in the geosciences, through training support andpartnerships with higher education establishments; continuing professional training, through somesixty introductory and advanced courses in all geosciences fields.
Building on geology as its core competence, BRGM develops expert knowledge in resource
management, risk management and innovative eco-technologies. These activities are organized
into 10 main topic areas that address the industrial and social challenges of today: geology,
mineral resources, geothermal energy, geological storage of CO2, risks, post mining, water,
polluted sites and soils, waste, metrology and laboratories, information systems.
The BRGM was created in 1959. It operates as a public industrial and commercial institution,
reporting to the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Research, the Ministry for Ecology,
Sustainable Development and Energy and the Ministry for Economy, Industry and Digital
Technology. The BRGM is ISO 9001 certified (quality) since 2004 and ISO 14001 certified(environment) since 2012. Its analytical laboratories are accredited by the Cofrac since 1994. The
BRGM is one of the Carnot institutes. BRGM employs 1100 people, including more than 750
researchers and engineers (geologists, geotechnicians, hydrogeologists, geochemists, modelling
specialists, geophysicists, IT engineers, etc.), in its 32 agencies in mainland and overseas France.
BRGM teams are involved in projects in more than 40 countries. BRGM is also member of theFrench association for natural disasters prevention and of the French association of earthquake
engineering.

Research Achievements and Challenges
As our societies become more urbanized, assessing our exposure to natural risks is coming underincreased scrutiny. However, urban vulnerability and resilience remain difficult to assess in aholistic way: multiple spatial and temporal scales are involved for adverse events such as
earthquakes, marine flooding, soil and coastal erosion, tsunamis, landslides, shrinking and swellingof clays and urban underground management. In addition, global change is both affecting the Earth
as a whole (climate change, sea level rise) and through multiple local impacts of human activities(urbanization, sediment mining, land use changes, etc.).
In this context, BRGM aims at developing methods and tools (observations, modelling,experiments, data analysis, uncertainty analysis) for assessing hazards’ levels and their impacts
on physical and systemic vulnerabilities. BRGM also aims at improving the understanding ofclimate and global change and its potential impacts on natural risks. The most recent researchachievements in the above mentioned fields were done through different partnerships built during
projects funded by French and European research agencies. In the framework of the 2nd Global
Summit of Research Institutes for Disaster Risk Reduction, the following achievements are worth
to highlight:
Together with the partners of the FP7 SYNER-G project (Systemic Seismic Vulnerability and Risk
Analysis for Buildings, Lifeline Networks and Infrastructures Safety Gain, coordinated by the
University of Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis), we aimed at understanding the systemic
vulnerability of various societal elements at risk belonging to a human-constructed system (city,
region, lifeline network, etc.) and at proposing appropriate methods and tools to consider interelement and intra-systems interdependencies, including socio-economic features. It promoted theuse of modern resources and tools for seismic risk mitigation and it established a European
reference for seismic societal and physical vulnerability.
In the same way, through the collaborative FP7 MATRIX project (New Multi-Hazard and Multi-Risk
Assessment Methods for Europe, coordinated by GeoForschungsZentrum), we aimed atdeveloping methods and tools to tackle multiple natural hazards within a common framework inorder to: i) help future analysts to optimize the risk assessment process; ii) contribute torationalizing data management for hazards and vulnerability reduction, and; iii) support costeffective decisions on structural and non-structural mitigation/adaptation measures following a
multi-hazard perspective.
BRGM was also a partner of the FP7 SafeLand project (Living with landslide risk in Europe:
Assessment, effects of global change, and risk management strategies, coordinated by the
Norwegian Geotechnical Institute), composed of 27 institutions from 13 European countries.
SafeLand developed generic quantitative risk assessment and management tools and strategies
for landslides at local, regional, European and societal scales and establish the baseline for therisk associated with landslides in Europe, to improve our ability to forecast landslide hazard anddetect hazard and risk zones.
The recent advances in the use of High Performance Computing (HPC) numerical tools to estimate
seismic hazard, especially in a context of complex three-dimensional geological structure in low ormoderate seismicity, are worth mentioning. Together with the partners of the project E2V(Euroseistest Verification and Validation, funded and lead by the CEA) we evaluated the reliabilityof ground motion simulations to predict observed data in a real case for civil engineering design
purposes.
In the field of seismic instrumentation, BRGM is investing resources for developing the use of
microelectronic accelerometer sensors (MEMS). Miniaturized and much cheaper than conventional
sensors, MEMS offer many possibilities for environmental monitoring. In collaboration with theEuropean-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) and the local education authority, BRGM
has delivered MEMS devices to sixteen schools of the Martinique (French West Indies) so as todevelop a local community of the Quake Catcher Network initiated by the Stanford University.

Those research achievements connect back to actual disaster risk reduction goals through theclose collaboration between the three BRGM’s Directorates which are: the Scientific Research
Directorate, the Support to Public Policy Development Directorate and the International
Cooperation Directorate. Some of the advances made in the above projects are now routinely
proposed to public policy development or commercial calls for mitigating future natural disasters.
For instance, the methodology and tools developed during the E2V project were applied on a
Swiss city whose complex three-dimensional geology required advanced three-dimensional
seismic wave simulations to assess its seismic hazard. BRGM’s scientific programs also contributeto the development of climate services in order to transfer best applicable results from research toinnovation and finally improve adaptation practices. Another relevant example is our participation
to the micro-zonation program in Haiti: this program was decided following the dramatic
earthquake in January 2010 and aims to deliver a sharp understanding of local risk. It is funded
jointly by the United Nations Development Programme and the Ministry of Public Work in Haiti. It
started in September 2011 with the micro-zonation of the capital city, Port-au-Prince and has thenbeen extended to four municipalities in the North of the country. A particular point in this project liesin the strong implication of Haitian teams: in addition to data exchange with Haitian scientificinstitutes, the project is a real partnership with the Mining and Energy Office and the National
Laboratory for Buildings and Public Work. The objective is not only to produce maps describing thepotential effects of earthquakes in terms of ground motion or induced effects, andrecommendations for risk prevention, but also to share knowledge so that the Haitian colleagues
are able to conduct by themselves the last micro-zonation of the project. This illustrates thesocietal role that we, as scientists, have to play to help developing countries to prepare for andface future disasters.
BRGM’s Risks and Prevention Division sets its activities in the context of an evolving world, always
denser, more interconnected, and subject to changing climate conditions. Its aim is to deliver thetools and knowledge for building more resilient societies in the face of a multiplicity of natural
threats. Major challenges in that perspective include:- Understanding and quantifying the impacts on natural hazards of climate change andincreased human pressure on the environment, in order to build forecasting tools and derive
appropriate adaptation strategies;- Developing approaches for multi-hazard / multi-risk assessment and mapping (between natural
hazards: seismic, hydro-meteorological, coastal and volcanic risks, but also to take into
account potential cascade effects with triggered industrial or nuclear risk); supporting decisionmakers for an informed multi-risk management of land-use in the aim of a sustainable use ofurban and rural territories;- Expanding vulnerability assessment methods and their geographical coverage, including
vulnerability assessment of urban / peri-urban systems that take account of functional andgeographical interdependencies between buildings, networks and facilities, and time-evolutionof vulnerability in response to successive natural aggressions;- Carrying on the improvement of our capacity to support public authorities and private
stakeholders in the management of crises due to natural hazards, through early warning
systems and rapid response tools;- Improving the reliability of computations/simulations (e.g. to better reflect the complexity ofphenomena or heterogeneity of the geological medium) and quantifying their uncertainties; inparticular, strengthening the capacity to appropriately assess and manage low-probability-highconsequences events;- Coping with numerous data and computationally intensive models. The growing interest in High
Performance Computing, distributed sensors and/or crowdsourcing generates a wealth of datathat needs to be appropriately managed, distributed and used.
Additional points, contributing to these challenges, that are worth a highlight include:- Further development of monitoring devices and improve monitoring networks (seismic,
geophysical and geodetic) to better identify key parameters and better quantify theiruncertainties;-Enhancing the reliability of procedures for quantifying risks and their evolution in the short,medium, long terms;
Launching works on new generation of three-dimensional geological mapping. BRGM iscurrently working on the “Référentiel Géologique de la France” (RGF). Such 3D information
system aims at gathering and distributing all data relative to the subsurface. Significant
challenges lie in:o An appropriate design of the information system to feed into it all relevant data forstudying natural risks;o A comprehensive collect of data provided by previous natural risks study, to capitalize
on previous works achievements in terms of geophysical and geotechnicalcharacterization;o Interoperability concerns, according to international standards as the INSPIRE directivein Europe for instance;o The capacity for a joint exploitation of all these data in numerical models.

Suggestions for the Disaster Research Roadmap
In addition to the scientific and technical challenges described above, we believe that Disaster
Research Institutes should underline in their Roadmap the need for:- Multidisciplinary approaches to natural disaster. Beyond the technical assessment of risk, there
is a growing interest in socio-economic assessments to:o Evaluate the populations’ perception of risk, land use planning policies, mitigation andadaptation strategies;o Assess potential costs of natural risks, to balance the cost and benefit of public policies
for disaster risk reduction, and support decision-maker in securing appropriate credits;o Assess the effectiveness and efficiency of risk reduction strategies for a sustained effort.
This need to collaborate, in particular with the economics scientific community, includes acloser cooperation with insurance companies, which do develop technico-economic
assessments of natural disasters and gather a wealth of data on past disasters.
- Contribution to populations resilience during the crisis and post-crisis phases, through:o Developing alert systems, support to emergency aid during crisis and feedback ofexperiences;o Designing tools for systemic risks analysis and predictive modelling, which allow, once
updated with real time data, the optimization of the reconstruction plans.
- A repeated investigation of feedback data from past disasters to strengthen models andassessments, including economic assessments from insurance data as mentioned above.
- A constant attention to the translation of scientific progresses and achievements (in terms of
data, tools and methods) to the benefit of concrete disaster risk reduction policies. This implies
a regular dialog with decision-makers:o to explain in practical terms how they can integrate new scientific findings in their tools;
o to integrate in the planning of natural risks research their concerns resulting from fieldissues.
- A particular form of the previous point is the capacity to educate populations for an
appropriation of risk mitigation actions. Disaster research institutes should strive tocommunicate in a pedagogical way, every time possible, on their results to reach the publicand grow its awareness about risk reduction.
- A closer care to knowledge transfer in less developed countries. For an effective disaster risk
reduction worldwide, it is a responsibility of research institutes to help building local
competencies, without which no sustained results will be achieved. Knowledge transfer throughcapacity building workshops, staff or students exchange, or joint projects implementation
should be fostered to aim at a harmonized ability level worldwide.
- Expanding the above point, the intensification of scientific exchanges to share results, tools
and concerns, but also to share data (e.g. through the “Référentiel Géologique de la France”
mentioned earlier) that may be widely used either for specific field applications or to develop
generic methods.