If the Engineer tries to coordonnate the two facets of its activities : on one hand the management of urban functions, on the other hand the management of the risk, he hesitates to escape of these to tackle with complexity as he should do. Meanwhile, our experiment of urban areas as well as our action in the management of prevention show complexity appear in the carrying out of projects and in disasters. By proposing a tool to analyse urban areas : the « territoire-étagé », by using it as monitoring tool, we open a way to allow engineers to anticipate as soon as possible the development of damaging processes. By allowing a better understanding mechanisms into metapolitan areas [Ascher, 1995], the engineering of « territoire-étagé » gives the possibility feed-back on management practices to expect reduce, by resilience, the perturbations or the effects of various nature and intensity.
The territoire-étagé : a proposal for taking into account vulnerability in metapolitain areas