GNGTS 2013 SES S IONE 2.3 CHAllEnging RisK REdUcTiOn THROUgH EdUcATiOn And pREpAREdnEss G.L. Piangiamore1, G. Musacchio2, M. Bocchia3 1 INGV - Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sede di Portovenere, Italy 2 INGV - Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Sede di Roma, Italy 3 Provincia della Spezia, Settore Difesa del Suolo, Servizio di Protezione Civile, La Spezia, Italy Introduction. It is increasingly acknowledged that disasters are the result of natural and social processes (Okazaki, 2007). Unlike the natural conditions that have a strong unpredictability component, social dimension of the disaster risk relates to the way human being interacts with natures. Hence, human behavior is the crucial factor in the degree of vulnerability and the likelihood of disasters taking place. Often people seem to know that a natural disaster might hit them, nonetheless the lack of awareness results in a general underestimation for effectiveness of actions towards risk mitigation. In many countries only few households or public buildings have disaster plans and supply kits, or have retrofitted and safe-proofed the inside, in case of earthquakes. Similarly little actions have been taken to safe-proof land in case of hydrogeologic threat. Disaster preparedness and prevention programs often remain in the domain of assumptions instead of evidence (Horton, 2011). Since disasters are infrequent in nature and memories are short (Komac, 2009; Biernacki et al., 2008; Wisner, 2006; Komac et al., 2011), there is an urge to promote culture of prevention and preparedness. The misconception about disasters as nature’s curse has most to do with mindset of people towards safety culture and the chance to live hazard in a sustainable way. The future emergency response needs to be better aligned with a longer term perspective in terms of development, crucial socioeconomic investments and infrastructure and, above all, preparedness (Horton, 2011). Here, education plays a significant role. The key to reduce risk is to start from scratch. We need to enhance capacity building for disaster risk reduction and, to do so, we need to educate both decision makers and general public. The Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015 Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters, adopted at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction, highlights knowledge and education as one of the five main priorities of action. In this paper we deal with actions based on education to challenge perception and memory of disasters while builing knowledge and skills essential for disaster preparedness. Having children has a chief target one can rely on a chain reaction (domino effect): children transmit the risk-related knowledge to their parents and other people in their social network (e.g.: Cardona, 2007; Stoltman et al., 2007; Wisner, 2006; Kuhlicke et al., 2011). Education to raise risk perception and awareness. Every individual’s cultural heritage should include disaster awareness and the development of such attitudes should be encouraged in early childhood. As disaster risk management should be everybody’s business, children of today must be appropriately educated and adequately trained to face the disaster risks. Although only education gives the opportunity to implant disaster awareness culture to future citizens, several analytical studies aimed to find strategies to permanently intervene on education, highlights how schools worldwide are strongly unprepared towards natural hazards education (Sinha et al., 2007; Bernhardsdóttir et al., 2012; Komac et al., 2013). Effective actions on education should be permanent and integrative, and cut across all formal and informal educational efforts in close contact with reality (Sinha et al., 2007). Actions to be taken to improve school mandatory programs are fundamental and long term; they require a strong interaction between science and school world. However best practice examples are more easily run towards informal education. In this framework we discuss examples of informal education towards earthquake and floods threats. The ERiNat project Educazione ai Rischi Naturali (Training on Natural Risks) is an attempt of life-long learning prevention strategies for students from the La Spezia province and, in a domino effect manner, the adults belonging to their families. 446 131218 - OGS.Atti.32_vol.2.sez.3.08.indd 446 07/11/13 09.05 GNGTS 2013 SES S IONE 2.3 Piovono idee! (Cloudy with a Chance of ideas!) is an active learning experience to promote preparedness towards floods threat and climate change. It was designed after the flood that stroke Lunigiana and the La Spezia surrounding on October 25th 2011. The ERiNat project: an education on Natural Risk experience. The ERiNat project started during academic year 2004/2005 as an educational experiment targeted to last year of lower secondary schools students and went on for 10 years. Although born dealing with seismic risk mitigation, it included on the way, hydrogeological and forest fires risk. The actions can be grouped into: classroom lectures, evacuation drills at school, a competition and summer campuses. The ERiNat project is promoted by the Land Protection Sector of La Spezia’s Civil Protection Service and it is developed with the Regional Education Office for Liguria Office V - Territorial Sector of La Spezia and the Prefect’s Office of La Spezia. The INGV (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia) of Portovenere, manages the organization and realization of the project (Piangiamore et al., 2012). Lectures in classrooms are an interactive learning opportunity to approach seismic and hydrogeological risk, safety good practice and forest fires from a geological perspective while highlighting the urge to know what to do in case of an emergency. They have been held directly by experts in each field: a scientist, a representative of State Forest Rangers Corps and a representative of the Fire Brigade. Since expectation by everybody grew over time, the on going actions involve the whole Province of La Spezia and give an overview of the natural hazards in the local environment. Educational material is handed out to students during non-formal lectures to allow reinforce the work done with the experts: teachers will go over the topics, peer groups will discuss some of the issues, while at home parents will also get involved in the educational chain-reaction. Evacuation drills at school are carried out under control of firefighters and civil protection volunteers reporting to school officials and to the municipalities the improvements and changes needed to improve school safety. ERiNat is one of the most significant initiatives of the project developed by the Province of La Spezia Piano di attuazione e miglioramento in itinere di un processo formativo nell’ambito della prevenzione dei rischi naturali (Implementation plan and ongoing improvement of an educational process on natural risk prevention). It won an award in the competition Premiamo i risultati (We reward results) promoted by the Ministry of Public Administration and Innovation (Rome, 17 May 2010, ForumPA conference) (Piangiamore et al., 2012). The success of the project went so far that we could even manage actions towards formal education: natural hazards education was included within the local schools’ POF (Piano dell’Offerta Formativa) to ensure that not just science, but every teacher may be involved in the initiatives. To boost up interest we set up a competition that since 2009 encouraged in-depth study on the following subjects: • Whats, wheres and hows about earthquakes; • Learn adequate behaviors in case of earthquakes; • Become a little firefighter and Civil Protection volunteer for you and your families; • Prevent forest fires: a destructive phenomenon for the environment and a danger for persons and things; • Learn how to report a fire and what to do if a fire threatens you closely; • Study landslides and floods for prevention and safety. The competition prices the best text, poster or presentation and is intended to seek collaboration among teachers on issues revolving around natural hazards: students will be guided to properly approach the problem by science teachers, will explore the text, the drawings and the graphic layout with the language and art teachers. In this way, teachers firstly reluctant 447 131218 - OGS.Atti.32_vol.2.sez.3.08.indd 447 07/11/13 09.05 GNGTS 2013 SES S IONE 2.3 Fig. 1 – EriNat project: the winners of the 2012 EriNat contest (top); a guided tour from Rocchetta to Brugnato (bottom left); the winners of the 2010 contest in the wind farm of the Cappelletta Pass on Monte Gottero (bottom right). to listen, could approach security and become part of the process to disseminate the culture of risk. The Provincial Civil Protection Service of La Spezia rewarded every year the schools of the three winning classes with teaching material and equipment (€ 1200, 800 and 500 for the first, second and third classified, respectively). Students from the three winning classes took part of a guided tour by the Forest Rangers Corps, GEV (Voluntary Ecological Guards) and volunteers from the Civil Protection Service of the Province of La Spezia by means of transport kindly provided by the Navy. It is worth notice that the 2012 ERiNat competition guided walking tour was on the areas hit by the October 25th 2011 flood to raise children awareness on the flood environmental impact (Fig. 1). The fifth edition of the ERiNat competition has almost doubled the prizes respect of the previous editions thanks to the financing of I laboratori della cittadinanza condivisa e partecipata - IV annualità (The laboratories of shared and participatory citizenship - IV year) project. The summer campuses Anch’io sono la Protezione civile (I am the Civil Protection too) Since 2011 the free summer campuses I am the Civil Protection too concluded and completed the ERiNat course in the month of July. The program derives from a national project of the Civil Protection Department and it is managed by the Province of La Spezia, the Provincial Coordination of Civil Protection Associations and the GEV.