Schools-tailored actvities communicate seismic risk

Ferrara

Risk communication is a crucial element in the management of risks: it has a great potential to raise awareness, increase preparedness, and promote legislative interventions.
Uncertainty, lack of scientific knowledge, misunderstanding, misinformation, cognitive bias, distrust in authorities are among the major threats of effective risk communication. Nonetheless recent studies have highlighted that seismic risk communication practices have been increasing during the last decades although still more work needs to be done.
There are different models of risk communication: the majority refer to the public understanding paradigm, in which information are given in a “one-way” direction to the public, and to the public engagement paradigm, in which stakeholders are meant to participate in the building process of knowledge. In preparing a risk communication campaign, the school target has revealed as one of the most important to address, given its high potential to influence a risk-resilient society.
In this paper, activities to communicate seismic risk communication specifically designed to engage middle school students are presented. Science communication with teen audiences has a unique challenge: there is a fundamental need to design a communication that can help them feel involved.
The work presents the framework within which the activity is done. It describes the communication goals, learning methodology and present some of the activities that have been included in a format suitable for open-door outreach events. The activities discussed in this work were tested within two open-doors that were held at the Milano division of the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology in the year 2023.

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