In the context of climate change and increasing urbanization, Small Island Developing States are increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters. In response to urbanization in at risk areas, the concept of territorial resilience has potential as an approach to urban flood issues. The objective of this research is to develop a spatial decision support tool based on a collaborative assessment method of territorial resilience. The proposed methodology consists of: the adaptation to the French Polynesian context, three existing resilience assessment methods applied to a case study in the Punaruu Valley’s (Punaauia, French Polynesia) and the use of geovisualization techniques: use of GIS for data processing and analysis, visualization, mapping and model processing. This methodology integrates the technical, urban and social components of the territory, while highlighting the various levers available to improve territorial resilience and facilitate its understanding through collaborative work efforts and the use of a visual tool. The results demonstrate the reproducibility of these methods for assessing resilience in French Polynesia. They underline the potential of a collaborative approach to highlight critical infrastructures and generate possible decision support to improve the territory’s ability to function despite a disruption and the ability to rebuild following this disruption.

Island territories and their coastal regions are subject to a wide variety of stresses, both natural and anthropogenic. With increasing pressures on these vulnerable environments, the need to improve our knowledge of these ecosystems increases as well. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have recently shown their worth as a tool for data acquisition in coastal zones. This literature review explores the field of UAVs in the context of coastal monitoring on island territories by highlighting the types of platforms, sensors, software, and validation methods available for this relatively new data acquisition method. Reviewing the existing literature will assist data collectors, researchers, and risk managers in more efficiently monitoring their coastal zones on vulnerable island territories. The scientific literature reviewed was strictly analyzed in peer-reviewed articles ranging from 2016 to 2022. This review then focuses on the operationalization of the concept of resilience as a risk management technique. The aim is to identify a procedure from raw data acquisition to quantifying indicators for the evaluation of the resilience of a territory and finally linking the analyzed data to a spatial decision support system. This system could aid the decision-making process and uses the islands of French Polynesia and its Resilience Observatory as a case study.

Climate change has an ever-increasing impact on island territories. Whether it is due to rising sea levels or the increase in recurrence and intensity of extreme events, island territories are increasingly vulnerable. These impacts are expected to affect marine and terrestrial biodiversity, human occupation (infrastructure) and other activities such as agriculture and tourism, the two economic pillars of French Polynesia. While the current and future impacts of climate change on island territories are generally accepted, data acquisition, modeling, and projections of climate change are more complex to obtain and limitedly cover the island territories of the Pacific region. This article aims to develop methodologies for the acquisition and exploitation of data on current and future climate risks and their impacts in French Polynesia. This work of acquisition and valorization is part of a research project for the development of an observatory of resilience to climate risks in the perspective of building a spatial decision support system.