Crescimbene, Massimo

In the modern society of risk (U. Beck, 1986), risk reduction education projects and awareness campaigns play, always more frequently, 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. Just remember, for example, International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, which basic objective was to decrease the loss of life, property destruction and social and economic disruption caused by natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, volcanic eruptions, droughts, locust infestations, and other disasters of natural origin (https://www.unisdr.org/who-we-are/history). Our principal experiences in risk reduction activities, gained in over 15 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 (http://www.earth-prints.org/bitstream/2122/8741/1/miscellanea13_2012_edurisk.pdf); - education and psychosocial activities realized with students, teachers and citizens in the post emergencies of L’Aquila (2009) and in the Po Plain (2012); - training activity for the Civil Protection volunteers involved in the Io non Rischio campaign. One of the most relevant problems in all these activities for risk reduction is the assessment process. 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. In this paper we process data on the seismic risk perception (over 9,000 responses distributed throughout the Italian territory) to obtain useful information to build an educational project. Our method consists of identify principal variables that influence risk perception scores and use it to design risk reduction activities. By this method, we think to realize an educational design able to valorize those factors that promote social change for risk reduction.

This work describes all the activities of information, following the earthquake of April 6, 2009 L'Aquila (Central Italy), aimed to the Department of Civil Protection (DPC), to the operators involved in emergency, to the people affected by earthquake and teachers of schools opened immediately after the earthquake and in September. These initiatives arise from different experiences and skills gained in recent years in seismic risk reduction projects and in the field of information and emergency management. Just after the April 6 earthquake, the COES (Centro Operativo Emergenza Sismica, Seismological Emergency Operational Center) has been installed in the DICOMAC (Directorate of Command and Control - which is the central structure of the DPC that coordinates the emergency activities in the areas affected by the earthquake) in the Guardia di Finanza headquarters in Coppito (L'Aquila).

The Polar Sciences represent an excellent topic for promoting new forms of collaboration between the world of research and the education. The outreach of the polar sciences, one of the branches of the Earth systems sciences tree, represents a unique opportunity, not only for its importance, multidisciplinary values and relapse of the polar researches, but, mainly, because it addresses and transmits ethical and social values as example of strong integration between human beings and extreme environments. In this frame the idea to communicate and to share the experience of the scientific research in Antarctica with the public and with the school is a challenge that a team of INGV researchers, engaged for many years in scientific missions in Antarctica, carries on with great enthusiasm within the several outreach activities of the Italian National Program for Antarctic Research (PNRA). The present work reports the experience of the outreach laboratory “Expedition to the South Pole”, realized in the frame of events organized by INGV and dedicated to the primary school. The educational themes developed within the laboratory concern the research in Antarctica, with particular focus on the human aspects, the geophysics and the progress of new technologies. The innovative aspect of the laboratory stands in the strategy to deal with Antarctica with an educational aim, proposing Antarctica as a natural laboratory, not only from a scientific point of view, but also as a laboratory of shared human experiences. The Laboratory is based on interactive methodology that uses the role-play and the experiential activities, enable the children to acquire knowledge on Antarctica (knowledge); to explore Antarctic characteristics as a natural laboratory and to experiment an emotional education through individual and team experiences (doing); to develop civics path linked to “sense of belonging and citizenship”, that will make the children aware that Antarctica does not belong to anyone but it belongs to everybody: it is a common and unique good (being). Based on several experiences realized with the schools, a video was made. The video is structured as tutorials for teachers who want to address the issue of Antarctica with their classes. During the presentation will be shown excerpts from the video to facilitate the sharing of this experience and to promote the production of other laboratories on Antarctica using the role-play technique.

Earthquake for Kids (E4K) is a simulation game designed in 2011 by F. Paglino, B. Pace and D. D’Amato, under the supervision of prof.ssa P. Rizzi on the model of Urban Simulation Games previously used in environmental education (Rizzi 2003, 2011 – ISPRA 2011 – Pace et al. 2011 – Paglino and Rizzi 2013). E4K was experienced with secondary schools of first and second grade of L’Aquila in 2011 (2 years after the M6.3 L’Aquila earthquake) and Pescara in 2014 and 2016. During the game participants are asked to decide an urban development plan in a high seismic risk area. A debriefing conference usually takes place in the same day or the day after. By the game teenagers learn optimal strategies regarding urban development and environmental protection; they also develop the control and management of environmental emergencies; finally they improve knowledge of seismic risk of their own region. In order to assess the efficacy of this educative strategy, 60 high school students of Pescara were involved in the game (May 2016) and completed a battery of ex-ante/ex-post questionnaires : the Seismic Risk Perception Questionnaire (SRP-Q, Crescimbene et al. 2013); the General Ecological Behavior (GEB) (Kaiser, 1998); a questionnaire to assess ecologist thinking, New Human Interdipendency Paradigm (NHIP; Corral-Verdugo, Carrus, Bonnes, Moser, Sinha, 2008). In this paper we discuss the E4K’s capability to promote in teenagers both an accurate seismic risk perception and adequate environmental protection strategies.

In late 2017 and early 2018 the Tsunami Alert Centre of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (hereinafter CAT-INGV) has put in place a pilot research on tsunami risk perception and understanding, first aimed at improving both risk and scientific communication strategies and activities. The research arises from a decennial debate on risk communication failures, which started by an in-depth analysis of the L’Aquila earthquake wrong predictions issued during the 2009 seismic crisis and the following trial, that started by 2010 (Cocco et al. 2015; Amato, Cerase and Galadini, 2015). The notorious L’Aquila case shocked the community of geo-scientist across the world, thus demonstrating that “good intuitions” are very likely to turn into “undue assumptions” and then in “risk communication failures” or worse, in “communication disasters”. According to a well - established ethical principle, delivering untested risk communication should be considered as an unacceptable practice, as well as delivering an untested drug (Fischhoff & Morgan, 1993: 199), and any effective and sustainable risk communication strategy should be grounded on well-researched principles instead of “good” intuitions (Bostrom and Löfstedt, 2003). As a consequence, the lack of knowledge about the way complex phenomena such as tsunamis are perceived and understood by coastal population may result in serious misunderstandings and even in rising outrage towards both tsunami early warning and risk governance systems, implicating the risk for scientist to be targeted by harsh criticism and / or to have a serious reduction of the intended effectiveness of risk mitigation measures. Our pilot research foresees a sample of > 1000 interviews to be administered in two tsunami-prone regions of Southern Italy - Calabria and Apulia - and data collection is nowadays ongoing. Although research is not yet completed at the time we write, evidence from first 374 interviews provides an amount of relevant implications about the ways demands placed on risk reduction strategies both at local and regional level. Along with the investigation of risk awareness, risk cultures and tsunami mental models, the research enlists some questions aimed at investigating knowledge and preferences of respondents regarding Tsunami Early Warning systems operations, the media most frequently used to get information on a daily basis and the most appropriate channels to spread timely and effective early warning messages. Research was also intended to identify the most appropriate message and channels to effectively spread both risk communication and alert messages: as Science pointed out “warnings often fail to travel the ‘last mile’ to people living in areas, often remote, that are at risk of being swamped” (Science, 2014). Although Italy coastal setting and tsunami exposition could not be compared to Indonesia or Japan ones, overcoming the last mile still remains a big challenge for risk and crisis communication Despite commonplaces and stereotypes people appear being not so misinformed on tsunamis as one may suppose, and they also have high expectations regarding authorities, civil protection and research institutions capabilities to face tsunami risk and manage with early warning issues. In addition, some target categories (e.g. elder women) would like to be getting early warnings through "traditional" broadcast media and sirens rather than receiving information by SMS or smartphone apps, hence suggesting the need of modulating EWS from actual conditions of recipients (age, education, media channels availability and literacy etc.).

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?

Risk perception is a fundamental element in the definition and the adoption of preventive counter-measures. In order to develop effective information and risk communication strategies, the perception of risks and the influencing factors should be known. This paper presents preliminary results of a survey on seismic risk perception in Italy. The research design combines a psychometric and a cul-tural theoretic approach. More than 5,000 on-line tests have been compiled from January 23rd till July 25th, 2013. The data collected show that in Italy seismic risk perception is strongly underestimated; 86 on 100 Italian citizens, living in the most dangerous zone (namely Zone 1), do not have a correct perception of seismic hazard. From these observations we deem that extremely urgent measures are re-quired in Italy to reach an effective way to communicate seismic risk.

The best chance to achieve a future disaster-resilient society is through risk education in School: it has a great potential to strengthen capacity of communities to mitigate risks. The KnowRISK (Know your city, Reduce seISmic risK through non-structural elements) project took this opportunity and implemented a risk communication campaign for schools in Portugal, Italy, and Iceland. The idea was that suitably changes in people’s knowledge and attitude can trigger best practices. Crucial to reach such target is the raise of awareness on meaningful issues. The main challenge of the campaign was how to effectively address the mitigation of the vulnerability to earthquakes of non-structural elements, which is an issue considered to be of low priority even in the building regulations of many countries around the world. The campaign stood on a communication strategy that was systematized within a protocol, for 13- 15 years old students, that specifies goals, contents, learning strategy, support material, and relies on face-to-face intervention of scientists in the classroom. This protocol had training sessions bounded by assessment sessions, ex-ante and ex-post, that allowed to validate its efficacy. The training made large use of flipped learning and Episode of Situated Learning (EAS) strategy to raise student’s motivation and increase achievements. To ensure its replicability, the protocol was tested in zones matching a wide range of seismic hazard in Italy. The assessment showed the protocol be effective and ready for a wide dissemination.

Nel seminario sono trattati gli argomenti psicologici che contribuiscono a definire il tema del benessere lavorativo e organizzativo e nella seconda parte della giornata si svolgeranno attività pratiche sui temi del benessere. I temi teorici affrontati riguardano il Benessere organizzativo da un punto di vista psicologico: concetti generali, cos’è, come si rileva, quali indicatori sono utilizzati, quali modalità di intervento.

The perception of risks involves the process of collecting, selecting and interpreting signals about uncertain impacts of events, activities or technologies. In the natural sciences the term risk seems to be clearly defined, it means the probability distribution of adverse effects, but the everyday use of risk has different connotations (Renn, 2008). The two terms, hazards and risks, are often used interchangeably by the public. Knowledge, experience, values, attitudes and feelings all influence the thinking and judgement of people about the seriousness and acceptability of risks. Within the social sciences however the terminology of ‘risk perception’ has become the conventional standard (Slovic, 1987). The mental models and other psychological mechanisms which people use to judge risks (such as cognitive heuristics and risk images) are internalized through social and cultural learning and constantly moderated (reinforced, modified, amplified or attenuated) by media reports, peer influences and other communication processes (Morgan et al., 2001). Yet, a theory of risk perception that offers an integrative, as well as empirically valid, approach to understanding and explaining risk perception is still missing”. To understand the perception of risk is necessary to consider several areas: social, psychological, cultural, and their interactions. Among the various research in an international context on the perception of natural hazards, it seemed promising the approach with the method of semantic differential (Osgood, C.E., Suci, G., & Tannenbaum, P. 1957, The measurement of meaning. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press). The test on seismic risk perception has been constructed by the method of the semantic differential. To compare opposite adjectives or terms has been used a Likert’s scale to seven point. The test consists of an informative part and six sections respectively dedicated to: hazard; vulnerability (home and workplace); exposed value (with reference to population and territory); seismic risk in general; risk information and their sources; comparison between seismic risk and other natural hazards. Informative data include: Region, Province, Municipality of residence, Data compilation, Age, Sex, Place of Birth, Nationality, Marital status, Children, Level of education, Employment. The test allows to obtain the perception score for each factor: Hazard, Exposed value, Vulnerability. These scores can be put in relation with the scientific data relating to hazard, vulnerability and the exposed value. On January 2013 started a Survey in the Po Valley and Southern Apennines. The survey will be conducted via web using institutional sites of regions, provinces, municipalities, online newspapers to local spreading, etc. Preliminary data will be discussed. Improve our understanding of the perception of seismic risk would allow us to inform more effectively and to built better educational projects to mitigate risk.