Strategies for seismic risk reduction: outreaching scientific knowledge or promoting awareness, to educate?

Abstract

This work develops a critical reflection on the activities for information, training and education conducted by a group of researchers of the INGV in recent years. In particular, our analysis, from an epistemological point of view, is between:  science outreach, the link between science and the world;  science teaching and its role of contact between science and school;  risk education, imaged as a process able to develop a culture of risk in relation to the territory in which we live. These issues are critically analyzed on the basis of experience gained since 1995. The educational methodologies tested in "peacetime", out of seismic events, with the EDURISK Project are compared with those experienced during the emergency in Abruzzo. Increasingly today, we refer to prevention as a primary strategy of defense against risk. But very often the responsibility of making prevention falls on the others as government, institutions, local authorities and the citizen perceive themselves as powerless against the inevitability of natural events and refer to the rulers for the implementation of effective prevention policies. As researchers, what are the most effective actions we can take to influence the risk reduction and motivate the choices of people? Before an event occurs, how can we influence the views and choices that people do or not do to reduce the risk? The effectiveness of our interventions must be based on scientific information, on a specific training, or must be reached to develop values, actions, awareness? Our interventions must be oriented and developed to inform, to train or to educate?