05.03. Educational, History of Science, Public Issues

The development of geoethics has made remarkable progress in recent years, involving a growing number of scholars from various disciplines. This has led to the creation of spaces dedicated to sharing reflections, points of view, and study material. The network of relationships between scholars has significatively incremented both physical and virtual spaces for discussions strengthened conceptual coherence in geoethical thought, anchoring reflections in the historical evolution of the discipline and promoting further developments through open analysis. At the heart of this network is the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG), founded in 2012. More recently, two new bodies have joined this network: the Commission on Geoethics of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), established in February 2023, which serves as the supporting branch of the IAPG to the IUGS and is the official body addressing geoethics and social geosciences for the Union; and the Chair on Geoethics of the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH), established in January 2024, whose aim is to broaden the international research network by promoting interdisciplinary initiatives that integrate geosciences, humanities, and social sciences through geoethics. These three bodies together represent the International Geoethics Research Infrastructure (IGRI), built over years of activity in geoethics at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Rome, Italy. It also includes the School on Geoethics and Natural Issues (the “Schola”), founded in 2019, and two editorial initiatives. This paper provides an overview of the foundations of geoethics and outlines the progressive development of the international research infrastructure supporting it.

Nell’occasione del Ventennale dell’Associazione Donne e Scienza, il presente contributo riassume un percorso di ricerca scaturito dalla partecipazione attiva all’Associazione per circa un decennio e che si snoda via via, corroborato dalle strategie di eguaglianza di genere a livello nazionale e internazionale. Viene affrontato il tema delle dimensioni di genere nei rischi naturali, come emerso nell’ambito progetto INGV DiGeST (2022-2024). I fenomeni naturali sono neutri, ma gli impatti non lo sono. Le diseguaglianze nella società, e in particolare quelle di genere, sono determinanti nel delineare i rischi e gli impatti degli eventi naturali. È necessario includere il genere nei contenuti di ricerca, educazione, rapporti scienza-società, ed è necessario farlo per realizzare una ricerca di qualità. Comprendere come le relazioni di genere modellino la vita delle donne e degli uomini è fondamentale per la riduzione del rischio.

Hai Sentito Il Terremoto (HSIT: Did You Feel the Earthquake?) is one of the longest-running citizen science projects on the web. Launched experimentally in 1996 and fully operational since 2007, HSIT has collected data on over 16,800 earthquakes felt in Italy through more than 1,500,000 questionnaires submitted by citizens. Of these, nearly 30,000 participants are registered with HSIT, ensuring continuous engagement across the national territory. The results of this collaboration are bidirectional: citizens contribute their experience of earthquake perception, forming a core dataset that provides localized information. In return, they receive real-time feedback on the earthquake's effects on their region, represented in macroseismic intensity using the Mercalli (MCS) and European (EMS) scales. This partnership enables seismologists to access high-resolution data for analyzing territorial responses to seismic events, including attenuation laws, identifying amplification and/or attenuation zones, and perception patterns based on urban characteristics and behavioral factors. Citizen involvement has expanded the scope of the investigation to include moderate-to-low magnitude earthquakes and distant areas affected by stronger quakes. Registered participants, in particular, gain awareness of earthquakes as ongoing, active phenomena, shifting from a perception of rare catastrophic events to a continuous focus on regional seismic risks. The HSIT project bridges the gap between scientific knowledge and common understanding, fostering a shared experience of living in earthquake-prone regions with awareness and respect for associated risks and preventive measures.

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.

L’articolo esplora l’impatto di ChatGPT, un modello di linguaggio di grandi dimensioni, evidenziando il dibattito tra le sue capacità innovative e le implicazioni etiche, in particolare analizzando dei bias di genere che affliggono le risposte di ChatGPT. Si evidenzia come ChatGPT possa perpetuare stereotipi di genere, ma anche come con l’intervento degli utenti si possano mitigare i bias. Replicando nel Giugno 2023 l’esperimento di (Gross, 2023), che indaga le risposte di ChatGPT su domande con un evidente dimensione di genere, si rilevano distorsioni e stereotipi. Si analizzano esempi di risposte discriminatorie e stereotipate su ruoli professionali, storie di successo, curriculum vitae, e abilità matematiche. Infine, si nota come il comportamento dei “Large Language Models” manchi di trasparenza nei criteri che producono le risposte. Per gestire questi problemi si suggerisce l’intervento di organismi regolatori sovranazionali, promuovendo la trasparenza e la qualità dei dati. Si conclude con l’importanza del coinvolgimento degli utenti nel miglioramento dei sistemi AI per una società più equa e priva di pregiudizi.

Nowadays, science communication is seen as one of the major challenges that research institutions are required to face. The strategies to attract public interest, the choice of the correct language, and the tools to trigger curiosity are a matter of debate. Research claims a concerning disaffection in older students toward science, which suggests that children are one of the major targets to whom the world of science and research should appeal. “Scientist as a game” is an experience of a hands-on approach that is combined with game-related challenges in the field of geoscience, where effective teaching methods require extensive research. This activity was held for the first time in the ‘A. Doria’ Civic Natural Science Museum in Genova (Italy) as an open day laboratory, and it was linked to an interactive exhibition realized by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia. We set up four laboratory activities that were focused on: (1) where and why earthquakes and eruptions occur on Earth; (2) how volcanoes happen; (3) what the effect of shaking on buildings is; and (4) how to behave correctly in the case of an earthquake. Children were teamed up to score points according to the challenges included within each activity. The feedback of this experience was very positive, as shown by the questionnaires handed out to the participants immediately after each activity, and it reinforces the reviewed research on using games and hands-on activities in education.

La questione terremoti, nel nostro paese tuttora purtroppo di grande attualità, suscita tante domande e trova in risposta, soprattutto nei media a grande diffusione o sui social, informazioni anche interessanti che uttavia, senza un quadro sintetico, restano, per chi le ascolta, frammentarie e incomprensibili. L’autore di questo contributo, ricercatore dell’INGV, ci aiuta a capire come e perché la scienza non riesce a prevedere tutto e, in particolare, quali passi si sono fatti e si stanno facendo per aumentare le nostre conoscenze sui terremoti, con attenzione anche alla modellizzazione di fenomeni così complessi, nella speranza che si abbiano ricadute anche nel campo della sicurezza. È importante cercare di evitare a priori i disastri anziché discutere a posteriori se si può prevedere quando viene il terremoto.

The “alternanza scuola lavoro” (interchange school/work) has been recently introduced by Minister of Education, University and Research (Law 107/15 - MIUR) in the Italian high school as a methodology for implementing the second cycle teaching. We have implemented the method in the Colli Albani, an area located 20 Km southeast Rome, the site of a quiescent volcanic district, a place very popular since prehistoric times. Educating secondary school students to planet sustainability and involving them in a deepest knowledge of the Earth is a challenge today. The reason is not only in the curricula: a recent study in four European countries, including Italy, has shown that none of the countries involved provides a special course to educate students on earthquakes and volcano hazards and risks (Bernhardsdottir et al. 2012). In our present and past experiences we have noticed a poor knowledge of the territory they inhabited. Very often, in accordance with that study, a total ignorance of the natural risks that in certain areas of our country can become serious. Our Laboratory then is getting year by year specialized in searching new methodologies to attract and motivate students. In this particular case, we have used three methods with students of a Classical Lyceum: gamification, science narrative and museology to transfer the knowledge of a territory interested by volcanism for thousands of years. We divided the students into three groups, each group for a different methodology. Apart from an area of common activities, the students of the three groups have worked on their own project with the same goals: obtaining a deeper knowledge of the area they inhabit and become aware of the natural risks. We present some preliminary results of the three groups activities obtained also by comparing the three methods efficaciousness.

IN THE FILE

In a world where natural disasters are increasing and there is an urgent demand for an ethics of prevention, management and communication, a framework of ethical principles and standards for orienting geoscientists in conducting their professional activity becomes fundamental. The defense against geo-risks involves many actors with different roles. Good relationships between them is necessary to assure efficiency while facing potential natural disasters. Defining a (geo)ethical framework of values means to create a solid base on which a proper management of georisks can operate. By defining roles and responsibilities, Geoethics is a valuable reference to work in this direction and to improve the resilience of human community to disasters.