CEDTI Colloquium 2025
Living on the Edge
Coastal Transitions in the Indian Ocean
18 - 21 November 2025
Institut Français de Maurice, Rose Hill, Mauritius
Concept Note
Coastal regions, where economic, social, political and ecological issues intersect, are among the most densely populated and exploited places in the world. The Indian Ocean (IO) is bordered by 47 developing countries that are home to a third of the world's population, and sea levels are rising at an unprecedented rate (6 to 8 mm/year – source: IPCC).
The expected risks of sea level rise and, more broadly, of climate change, are numerous: damage to homes and critical infrastructure, loss of biodiversity, destruction of agricultural crops in coastal areas, etc. Despite an increase in work on coastal adaptation devices, only 24% of studies focus on SIDS (Mallet et al., 2021).
In the Indian Ocean region, governments and organizations are strengthening their cooperative efforts to improve adaptation strategies. Current responses vary between hard protection structures (dikes, walls), soft interventions (new forms of housing), strategic withdrawal measures, or sometimes no intervention. Relocation remains little considered, while permanent structures still dominate practices.
What future for coastal communities in the Indian Ocean?
The 2nd edition of the CEDTI 2025 Colloquium will explore coastal transformations and their future potentials from architectural, geographical, technical and sociological perspectives. It promotes interdisciplinary collaboration and concrete exchanges between researchers and practitioners.
Colloquium topics
The colloquium will be composed of presentations, roundtable discussions, workshops and technical site visits which will be spread over the three days. The prevailing topics during the colloquium emanate from the five research poles at CEDTI and are as follows:
Topic 1: Digital Transformations for coastlines at risk
Contributions on these issues will be welcomed: the use of digital tools for project design, territorial monitoring, citizen participation, decision-making support or the modelling of coastal dynamics – all devices that inform, guide and transform our ways of designing, inhabiting, representing, collaborating and anticipating the coast.
Topic 2: Geography of Transitions
In this sub-theme relating to the geographies of transitions, the aim is to understand the way in which coastal societies in their pluralities adapt to climate change. The focus will be more specifically on different cross-cutting themes that shed light on the challenges of climate change in the Indian Ocean region: – the differentiated perceptions of populations in the face of climate change – risks and social inequalities – the possible futures of coastal tourism in SIDS – cities, ports and climate change – environmental transitions and coastal ecosystem services.
Topic 3: Submersible Architecture / Insubmersible Architecture
Proposals may focus on materials used in the transition of the coastline, considered as resources, supports for experimentation and generators of sensitive atmospheres. They will also be able to explore how these materials and the processes associated with them contribute to innovation in construction methods and in the manufacture of atmospheres – whether acoustic, light or visual, etc.
Topic 4: Skills to anticipate the future of water in island territories
Understanding in order to act on the ongoing transformations of the coastlines of the SIDs and their future potential from an architectural, geographical, technical and sociological point of view, requires the deployment of interdisciplinary approaches and the development of skills that are both transversal (such as the eight essential skills in the field of water and proposed by UNESCO) and specific ones. To increase the resilience and robustness of these territories, how can existing training courses be developed and what pedagogical innovations should be called for?
Topic 5: Water and architectural structures for food production
This part will study the strategies and techniques for adapting structures on the threatened coastline: – Partial or total dismantling of obsolete settlements – Transformation and relocation of existing structures – Experimentation of less impactful devices The presentations will therefore focus on fields where human constructions are evaluated according to the risks associated with rising sea levels, erosion and retreat of the coastline, the impact on the soil and its pollution. Whether they are part of housing, tourism or agriculture, these constructions will be debated according to their ability to fit or re-inscribe themselves in the verticality of the soil and the horizontality of the land-sea link, in a harmonious and negotiated way.
Colloquium timeline
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Call for long abstracts (500 words max): June 27, 2025
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Abstract submission closes : July 31, 2025
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Review of abstracts : August 15, 2025
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Abstract acceptance results : August 29, 2025
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Submission of presentation papers : October 10, 2025
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Notification of acceptance of articles : October 29, 2025
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Conference : November 18 to 21, 2025
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Publication of proceedings : 27 February 2026
Abstract Submission
Each proposal for presentation should be submitted by sending an A4 PDF through the link below
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Name(s), affiliation(s) and contact details of the presenter
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Colloquium theme chosen
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A presentation title
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An abstract of 500 words
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A maximum of five keywords to reflecting the proposed presentation at the end of the abstract
The deadline date for abstract submission is the 31st of July 2025. For any queries, please contact us on info@cedti.net .