Earthquakes, The hows and whys. Focus on The February 23, 1887 Ligurian earthquake

Abstract

Education and training are two ingredients that allow citizens to learn scientific information otherwise confined within laboratories, in particular in the field of environmental risk. It is in this perspective that the O3E (French acronym for European Observatory for Education and Environment) project was born. The O3E project is the follow up of a 10 year long testing phase (1997-2007) during which several national projects ("Sismos a I'Ecole", "EDURISK" and "climAtscope") were born. The overall objective of the O3E program is to network educational institutions, which are equipped with educational instruments and sensors to measure environmental parameters, across regions of the Latin Alps. Data on ground motion (seismometers), temperatures and rainfall (weather stations), on water resources (hydrogeology) recorded in schools are collected on dedicated servers, which are then made available to the educational community through the Internet. The so-structured O3E network becomes the starting point for many geosciences teaching and educational activities to natural hazards in order to: - promote experimental sciences and new technologies - network the actors involved in education and training - develope the sense of autonomy and responsibility in young people - strenghten and develope relations with regional partners in the field of education and academia - foster rational awareness of the problems related to the geological heritage and to the prevention of natural hazards, that is what can make the difference, in terms of safety, when an event occurs. Taking into account the guidelines of the program (which gives a large space to communication technologies), its educational dimension (awareness of environmental risks), its scientific content (geosciences), and its importance on a regional and even international scale (networking of schools), initiatives are started up by schools in close cooperation with the university and research community. As it is the case of this pamphlet dealing with an earthquake, which is emblematic for the regions involved in the O3E project: the Imperia -Menton earthquake occurred on February 23,1887. The data collected here (archives, seismograms, recent oceanographic studies ... ) will enable students and their teachers to deal with a case study.