Among other consequences, the Covid-19 crisis has prompted the public authorities to rethink the use of public space, particularly roads, in order to develop means of transport that are both efficient and adapted to the health context. Fearing a desertion of public transport and a massive shift towards the automobile, the leaders and technical managers of Europe, North America and South America have turned to active modes, including the bicycle that appeared as a vehicle adapted to ensure minimum physical social distance. The objective of the VÉLOTACTIQUE project is to collect data that will provide practitioners and researchers with the first elements of knowledge on the implementation and reception of tactical cycling town planning in the context of the health crisis, as well as its contribution to energy transition. VÉLOTACTIQUE is based on a comparative study carried out in France, in the metropolises of Besançon, Grenoble, Montpellier, Lyon, Paris, Rennes, Saint-Étienne, in Switzerland, in Lausanne and Geneva and in the Americas, in particular in Montreal and Bogotá. To do this, VÉLOTACTIQUE is based on an exploratory and comparative approach and intend to collect data over 12 months on policies, their developments, their reception with users and the changes observed in practices. The work program of VÉLOTACTIQUE is structured around 4 tasks, allowing the different sites and the different partners to be associated each time. In addition to the task dedicated to project management, the link with partner urban communities and the promotion of results (T1), the project revolves around 3 complementary tasks: an analysis of public policies within the metropolitan areas studied (T2 ); mapping of cycle paths and flows and use of the various paths (T3); and observation of the reception of arrangements and measures with cyclists with a focus on new bicycle users (T4).

In a global change perspective, high latitude regions happen to be an important observatory where current dynamics are observed. Studying slopes in polar environments is the main focus of the PRISM project. This project specifically aims at understanding, monitoring, and modeling the spatial dimension of slope dynamics in glacier basins. These dynamics do have a key role in the physical and hydrological behavior of polar glaciers. Slopes are impacted by permafrost melting, snow cover and glacier constraints. The combination of this factors leads to processes that are far from well documented. Acquiring data in slopes is not a straightforward task. To quantify precisely the processes occurring in slopes requires data both spatially and temporally precise enough. Difficulties associated with slopes access do forbid in most case direct field monitoring of slopes. Remote sensing, for obvious steepness of slopes reasons is not adapted either. Only Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) techniques do seem to allow for fine grain observations at adapted time steps. The study field of the PRISM project is the Austre Lovenbreen glacier basin located in Svalbard (79°N). This glacier has been studied by French and foreign scientists since the 60’s. The amount of data hence already available will be used to criticize and validate the results of this project and will provide valuable contextual elements. These will be helpful to model the evolution of slopes over time and to extrapolate results to the whole glacier basin. The project is organized in three different tasks. Snow dynamics will be evaluated by measuring the volume of snow laying on slopes. A high resolution spatial model of slopes at both the yearly maximum and minimum of the snow cover will help us derive the corresponding volumes. In the meantime, other data acquisition phases will focus on the short term evolutions of the snow cover therefore highlighting processes such as snow avalanches and melting. Whenever possible, these measures will be associated with manual measures of snow height and water equivalent and with automatic temperature loggers data. Rock and permafrost dynamics will also be monitored using TLS. This tool provides sufficient detail to assess rockfalls, rockslides, and slope movements. These events are related to the microclimatic context. Permafrost suffers from surface temperatures and rain precipitations effects. Rock dynamics are also linked to physical characteristics of slopes (steepness, orientation, nature of the rocks). The spatial approach of rock dynamics developed here will be coupled with temperature measures in the slopes. All rockrelated parameters do play a role in glacier issues as the glacier is receiving and transporting most of the rock material coming from the slopes. The last task of the project is focusing on glacier-slope interface and ice dynamics. Snow accumulations (névés) at the bottom of slopes will be located and quantified. A distinction between new slope-related ice and old glacier ice will be established. The annual variations of the slopes’ base will be monitored using a fine modeling of this contact area. TLS data will grant us the possibility to follow precisely these dynamics. These processes will be observed in different strategic places in the glacier basin such as accumulation and ablation zones, steep or low-angle slopes, corresponding to different interface configurations.

FractalGrid is about the use of fractality as a core concept to analyze, understand, design and operate the future smart grids. Development of new analysis tools and design concepts based on fractal geometry will be proposed to better achieve the control of highly distributed loads and generators in power systems and to improve the resilience “by design” of the future grid. The project aims to analyze the multiscale organization of smart grids and propose a new architecture paradigm for the smart grids based on fractality. We will show how smart grids structure impact performances and how the self-similar topology can benefit to the electrical system, from consumers to utilities. Links between the spatial organization of the built-up spaces and the optimal topology of the grid will be done. A simulation framework for the coordinated management of a fractal power system will be also developed considering the different spatial and temporal scales associated to the power grids, meteorological system and energy market. The last system cannot be anymore ignored because of their high impact on the todays' operation of the electrical system.

For several years, e-commerce or online commerce has been gaining market share in France. The health measures imposed by the Covid-19 epidemic have been accompanied by a significant increase in online purchases, in France as in the rest of the world. Along with the short and long-term increase in its market share, e-commerce has experienced a diversification of goods delivery processes in terms of locations, modes of transport used and delivery times. The research proposed by MOBS aims to understand the socio-economic and environmental impacts of e-commerce by examining in greater detail how it has modified the mobility chains of goods and people, the flows and structures that allow them, and ultimately the territories. The originality of the project is to propose a global and unprecedented approach that jointly considers the mobility of people and goods for online purchases, in BtoC and CtoC, through the examination of the chains of mobility necessary for the delivery of a good purchased online, from its reseller to its place of final use, most often the consumer's home. Trips can be managed, scheduled and delivered by different providers and by consumers who play an important role in the delivery of the goods they buy or sell themselves online. Ultimately, the socio-economic and environmental impacts of the mobility chains generated by e-commerce will have to be estimated in order to better guide the actions of public authorities, especially local authorities. To this end, the MOBS project is based on a mixed and ambitious methodology that will be developed in several parts. The first two parts, carried out in parallel, will provide qualitative and quantitative information on the main stakeholders in these chains, i.e. consumers and operators (in the broad sense). In a third part, we will identify the various mobility chains in their entirety by quantifying their socio-economic and environmental impacts using various fine models. The modelling of the impacts on specific territories will then be used to co-construct, in a prospective manner, with the public players, territorial policies that take into account e-commerce and its effects on mobility, flows and territories. Bringing together different disciplines in the human and social sciences (transport socio-economics, urban planning and development, geography, sociology), the MOBS project relies on researchers and laboratories recognized nationally and internationally for their scientific expertise in the field of mobility of people and goods

Reducing car dependency is one of the main goals of urban transport and land-use policies. In France, urban policies have primarily focused on the development of public transport and the restriction of car use. These policies have been quite effective in city centres. However they have been thwarted by the growing sprawl of households and economic activities, which have been accompanied by a multi-polarization of daily trips and an increase in distances travelled by car. There is a huge literature on the determining factors of car dependency (socio-economic, spatial, psychological…) and on the difficulties in changing individual daily travel behaviour. On the other hand there is little research on the policies that would encourage households to demotorise (i.e. to reduce the number of the cars they own) in a permanent manner, and on the conditions under which demotorisation could be effectively accompanied by a significant reduction in car use. The few studies available on this topic, mainly based on quantitative data, highlight that demotorisation remains a rare phenomenon, and that it is often related to economic constraints or a change in the household size (like the death of one of the partners or children moving out). However we assume that a thorough research on recent tendencies regarding demotorisation (observed in some dense parts of urban areas) is necessary in order to inform public stakeholders on the strategies to implement in order to reduce the number of cars owned by the households and mitigate the negative social and environmental consequences associated to car use, in a context where the image of the automobile is changing, ICT provide new perspectives regarding the organisation of daily activities (e-commerce, teleworking…) and mobility services (car sharing, carpooling…), and where urban forms are changing at various scales (ecodistricts, polycentrism…). Based on the analysis of four French urban areas (Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux and Dijon), and on quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the MoDe (Motives for Demotorisation in Urban Areas) research project has three goals. The first aim is to generate an overview, at the household scale and over long time scales, of the (socio-economic, psychological, spatial) motives which explain sustainable demotorisation. Beyond the role of biographical factors and instrumental and non-instrumental (symbolic and emotional) motives, accent will be put on the influence of social and urban contexts, and on the way the different factors interact in the long-run and lead to demotorisation, which will be considered as a process (and not as an isolated decision). The second aim seeks to describe and analyse the relationship between demotorisation, travel behaviour (especially car use) and social inequalities (mobility and accessibility). This comprehensive analysis will ensure the efficacity and the sustainability of public policies aiming at reducing the number of cars in urban areas. Indeed the third objective of MoDe is to address recommendations to policy makers in the fields of transportation and land-use with the goals to reduce car ownership, decrease car use and mitigate socio-spatial inequalities. The researchers are from sociology, psychology, geography, economy and planning. Additionally a close collaboration will be built in the four selected urban areas with policy makers who have already expressed their interest for the Mode project: they accepted to be interviewed (in order to help us understand the local contexts) and to participate in two workshops with the researchers in the middle and at the end of the project.