The Tree of Natural Hazard Education

Abstract

Natural hazards are often thought as being, beside a difficult issue, a major problem forcing the community to deal with the economic and social development. For this reason they require specific actions tailored environment. It is fundamental to build a ground to rely on when dealing with the governance of a territory and when the economic factors intersect scientific knowledge and available technical solutions. Science could usefully focus on simple, clear and yet accurate information. The social projection of natural disaters is not just the faith of careless attitude towards hazard as it might get strongly influenced by emotions event close in time. On the other end people might misperceive risks ineffectively choose recovery over prevention, when the latter is proved to be far less costly. There is a general mindset of people towards a culture of prevention and the relationship established between the concepts of hazard and disaster, as if one would automatically always turn into the other nature curse towards which humans have no power. There is much of emotions involving hazards response so that to be effective education should not only convey information in strictu sense (to explain natural phenomena and their causes), but drives the through interpersonal skills and explicitly use the language of emotions (and in particular the positive ones, eg. reassurance, confidence, serenity, optimism, etc... ). The Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia is a scientific institution monitoring of geophysical phenomena through networks of technologically advanced equipment which approach outreach and dissemination of scientific culture through publications for schools and web pages, exhibitions, special venues and open-­days. We envisage a virtual tree of natural hazard education where science actively interacts with general public to implant awareness on the urge of science knowledge in modern society when it comes to help independent opinions or participate to crucial decisions. Here we display on a tree several ways of doing outreach and education towards natural hazards. Activities encompass volcanic, seismic, hydrogeological hazard and risk education to explore and understand natural processes lying behind the hazard. The general concept of risk is also exploited, where teachers will have to think on what could be the actions to be taken to avoid risks, weather there are risks we are willing to take, what we think we cannot avoid and, above all, how do we behave facing a risky definitely remark the link between inhabitants and their land emphasizing on the sense of responsibility towards land preservation.