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Observation: concept and implications.

Abstract

International audienceThe professions associated to the analysis of territorial dynamics have evolved together with the technique and in particular The Technologies of Information and Communication. (TIC). If "the research and the interpretation of the types of space organization is a major task of the geographers" (Sède, 2002), it is equally important that the comprehension of these spatial organizations should go through the identification and comprehension of the performance of the actors who are upstream, the latter ones being strongly defined by their institutional position or not, as well as by the resources or constraints they are associated to (Jeannot, 2003). At the same time, the methods of analysis, which have continuously evolved as well, are nowadays reinforced because they dispose of more and more information (Moine, Sède, 2001) and it is now possible by means of certain observation tools to carry out in-depth analysis of certain geographic spaces (Moine, 2007), although without being able to correctly reproduce, by means of the same tools, the action logics that prevail and that make territories out of them. And even when dealt with spatial analysis (without considering the actors' logics), there are often some difficulties to overcome in order to mobilize reliable and comparable information updated on a regular basis. In this way, the observation tools grow in number, the informatics developments allow it, but very often they are not conceived in a general perspective which could allow in the same time the representation of the territories, their observation, helping in making decisions and support the local governance. We are actually dealing with understanding how a range of measures could be developed around the interaction among actors, but also between actors and data, which they possess and/or make use of, in order to develop a local "territorial intelligence"

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