Natural hazards revealed to children: the other side of prevention

Abstract

Risk misperception often ineffectively drives us to choose recovery over prevention; the latter being usually conceived with actions aimed at mitigation of infrastructure vulnerability. Although it is fundamental to implant the culture of prevention and therefore have an impact on risk mitigation and community disaster resilience, long-term programmes encompassing knowledge, innovation and education are often underestimated. If education involves children, we more efficiently spread the culture of risk reduction through a chain reaction dissemination mechanism and prompt behaviours that are better imprinted on the mind, reinforce awareness of hazard response, and foster citizens who tomorrow might be part of the process of making crucial decisions on prevention strategies. For the past 10 years, our learn-by-playing, hands-on, emotionaldriven, curiosity-driven approach activities have involved more than 20 000 students and teachers living in areas prone to natural hazards. In addition to requests and appreciation from the public, questionnaires handed out to teachers and students have proved that our approach to prevention best practice is successful. Questionnaires filled in by children and their families encouraged us to promote the strong potential for dissemination in the local environment. We are engaged in on-going research on risk reduction oriented science outreach activities to implement models focused on geoscience education and to give citizens tools to affect the process of risk reduction decision-making.