From Crisis Management to Anticipatory Action
What if a territory could build its capabilities before they are needed?
Crises often reveal vulnerabilities that existed long before the event: insufficient resources, fragile infrastructures, poorly connected actors, fragmented information, critical dependencies or capabilities that exist but cannot easily be mobilised.
Anticipatory Territories (AT) begins with a simple idea: do not wait for a crisis to discover which capabilities a territory needs in order to respond.
The approach seeks to identify, connect and strengthen those capabilities before critical thresholds are reached.
From Risk to Capability
Anticipatory Territories does not seek to predict crises.
It explores how a territory can better observe, anticipate, prevent, prepare, act, adapt and learn in response to the transformations it faces.
The question is therefore no longer only:
What are the risks?
It becomes:
Which capabilities must we build, connect or strengthen today in order to retain our capacity to act tomorrow?
The approach connects residents, communities, professionals, institutions, local knowledge, resources, infrastructures, technologies and operational capabilities.
The objective is not only to understand what exists, but how these capabilities can work together when conditions move beyond the normal operating environment.
FOREST
Anticipating the Transformation of Forest Systems
FOREST explores the territorial capabilities required in response to changing forests: tree decline, drought, disease, accumulation of combustible biomass, climate change and wildfire risk.
The approach extends beyond forest management.
It also examines detection, prevention, access to water resources, response capabilities, public warning, evacuation, coordination between actors and, where necessary, cooperation across territories and borders.
FOREST therefore connects the condition of forests with the capabilities a territory may need before a critical situation occurs.
WATER
Preserving a Capability Essential to Life
WATER considers water not only as a resource, but as an essential territorial capability.
Availability, access, quality, production, storage, distribution, continuity and water governance can become critical when a territory faces drought, pollution, infrastructure disruption, humanitarian crisis or climate transformation.
The objective is to explore how territories can diversify, secure and strengthen their water-related capabilities before disruption becomes critical.
CLIMATE
Turning Adaptation into Territorial Capability
CLIMATE explores how climate transformations progressively alter the conditions in which territories operate.
Heat, drought, changing rainfall patterns, water stress, ecosystem transformations and extreme events can simultaneously affect multiple capabilities.
Climate is therefore approached not as an isolated risk, but as a modulator capable of transforming several territorial systems at the same time.
The challenge is to identify necessary adaptations early enough to preserve the continuity of essential capabilities.
LIFE ON LINE
When Essential Capabilities Become Conditions for Life
Some situations extend beyond any single territorial domain.
Water disruption can affect health, food, hygiene, economic activity and mobility.
Energy disruption can interrupt communications, healthcare, production and access to water.
Population displacement can simultaneously generate needs for shelter, food, protection, information, energy and essential services.
Life on Line is therefore a transversal programme connecting situations in which the continuity of multiple essential capabilities becomes directly critical for people and communities.
It can intersect with WATER, FOREST and CLIMATE, as well as humanitarian action, energy, food, infrastructures, technology, knowledge and other essential capabilities.
Life on Line asks a fundamental question:
What must remain capable of functioning when normal conditions no longer function?
It is therefore not simply a fourth field of Anticipatory Territories.
It cuts across fields when multiple capabilities become simultaneously interdependent and essential to the continuity of life.
A Systemic Approach to Territory
FOREST, WATER and CLIMATE are not independent systems.
Drought can weaken forests.
A weakened forest can alter wildfire risk.
A wildfire can affect water, infrastructures, mobility, health and the economy.
Infrastructure disruption can in turn change a territory’s ability to respond.
Anticipatory Territories seeks precisely to observe these relationships, dependencies and cascading effects.
The territory is therefore understood as a system of interdependent capabilities, rather than a collection of administrative sectors.
From Research to Territory
The conceptual and scientific foundations of Anticipatory Territories are developed and documented within the VLG.world research environment, particularly in connection with the Science of Capability Architectures (SCA).
ECOSYSTEM VLG World provides the environment in which these architectures can encounter territories, communities, skills, technologies and projects, enabling their application to be explored in real-world contexts.
This creates a continuous circulation:
Research → Architecture → Territory → Experimentation → Learning → Research
Field observations can therefore inform the evolution of research, while research can provide new architectures for anticipation and action.
Building Before We Need It
Anticipatory Territories does not guarantee that a crisis can be prevented.
It does not replace authorities, professionals or existing safety and emergency systems.
It creates a space in which one essential question can be asked early enough:
If conditions changed tomorrow, would we still have the capabilities required to understand, decide and act?
The objective is not to wait for a crisis before building capabilities.
The objective is to build capabilities before they become indispensable.
ANTICIPATORY TERRITORIES
FOREST · WATER · CLIMATE
TRANSVERSAL PROGRAMME
LIFE ON LINE
From Crisis Management to Anticipatory Action
→ Explore Anticipatory Territories