Use the data of seismic Risk perception to design educational activities of risk reduction

Abstract

In the modern society of risk (Beck, 1986), risk reduction education projects and awareness campaigns play a central and relevant role. The last twenty-five years have witnessed a flourishing of studies, research projects, educational experiments and actions to reduce natural risks. Our principal experiences in risk reduction activities, gained in over fifteen years, concerned: - EDURISK, an educational project for risk reduction addressed to schools and teachers. Explicit objective of EDURISK is to promote risk awareness and the active role of citizens in its reduction; therefore, a goal of social change (AA.VV., Pessina and Camassi eds, 2012); - education and psychosocial activities realized with students, teachers and citizens in the post emergencies of L’Aquila in the 2009 (Crescimbene et al. 2010; Moretti et al. 2011) and in the Po Plain earthquake in the 2012 (La Longa, 2013); - training activity for the Civil Protection volunteers involved in the “Io non Rischio” campaign (Postiglione et al., 2016). One of the most relevant problems of all these activities for risk reduction is the assessment process (La Longa, 2008). To have the tools and be able to consider the right variables to understand if the activities put in place produced desired outcomes. We arrived to the conclusion that the process knowledge-awareness-action never occur automatically, within an educational process, but this process must be accompanied in the direction of doing. To facilitate this process, it is necessary to understand better what are the elements and factors that influence it. In this sense, the data collected in recent years, on risk perception may represent good basis to identify the key-points to active the process knowledge-awareness-action. We think that improve risk perception of common people is the first goal to reach to be able to mitigate and reduce seismic risk. In this direction since the year 2013, we built the Seismic Risk Perception Questionnaire (SRP-Q) to investigate risk perception in the Italian citizens. In the last three years we collected over 9,000 questionnaires by web (www.terremototest.it) and in the year 2015 we conducted a Computer Assisted Telephone interview (CATI) on a national statistical sample of over 4,000 people. Our method consists of identify principal variables that influence risk perception scores and use it to design risk reduction activities. We executed an explorative factor analysis (FA) on the seismic risk perception data. These datasets derived by the CATI Survey conducted on an Italian statistical sample (N= 4012) in the first months of 2015. Results of the FA describe for each indicator, considered in the SRP-Q (Crescimbene et al. 2013), some components that explain variability among scores observed and correlated variables, in terms of a potentially lower number of variables called factors. Considering the principal components of each indicator (Hazard, Exposure, Vulnerability, People and Community), we described these components and obtained useful indications to design activities that may improve seismic risk perception. By this method, we think to realize an educational design able to valorise those factors that promote social change for risk reduction. In the near future, we will apply on small groups the training program and the activities and will evaluate if the risk perception scores will be improved.