Celebrating 25 years of seismology at schools in France

Abstract

Abstract. An educational program focusing on seismological activities for school and university students that trains in observational sciences and raises citizen awareness of natural hazards has been active in France since 1995. Over this quarter century, different generations of students have learned various lessons concerning instrument installation, data recording, and analysis. These actions have led them into the field of scientific interrogation and interpretation, making them better prepared for our modern technological societies. We describe these student commitments that have been motivated by the installation of the first educational broadband seismometer in southern France. Analysis of regional earthquakes has generated a greater awareness of the seismic hazards where students live, while records of strong earthquakes all around the world have led to interaction between students, especially after the deployment of additional seismometers in schools. The natural extension of such an educational seismic network, first at the national level in France in 2006 and later in many countries through various collaborations, has enriched the pedagogical practices of teachers, increasing their skills in seismology and natural sciences among various other disciplines and complementing standard educational resources. We describe the necessary and sustainable relations between teachers and researchers over time. Combining students' motivation, teachers' experience and researchers' expertise has led to different hosting structures over the years. We conclude by presenting the feedback from a survey carried out in 2019 among all the teachers involved, highlighting the strong and weak points of such a long-term adventure. Recent integration into the official syllabus of the new Geosciences high school curricula in France illustrates the impact of such an exceptional experience.

A scoping review of seismic risk communication in Europe

“…They have a great potential in fostering disaster-resilient communities through the domino-effect that children have in educating adults and their environment (Finnis et al, 2007;Ronan et al, 2008;Piangiamore et al, 2015;Rodríguez-Giralt et al, 2020). Several publications (Cantore et al, 2003;Camassi et al, 2005;Courbolulex et al, 2012;Zaharia et al, 2013;Lanza et al, 2014;Zollo et al, 2014;Musacchio et al, 2015;Piangiamore et al, 2015;Baytiyeh and Öcal, 2016;Custodio et al, 2016;Musacchio et al, 2016a;Peruzza et al, 2016;Saraò et al, 2016;Tataru et al, 2016;Zaharia et al, 2016;Barnaba et al, 2018;Peruzza et al, 2018;Musacchio et al, 2019a;Berenguer et al, 2020;Solarino et al, 2021a;Mohadier et al, 2021;Piangiamore et al, 2021;Scaini et al, 2022) point out the need for earthquake risk education in school curricula as a first step to reducing the impacts of future earthquake disasters and making vulnerable communities more resilient to future crises. However, our analysis also points out a critical gap in seismic risk communication practice: there are only a very few case studies devoted to assess effectiveness (e.g., Crescimbene et al, 2019;Plat et al, 2019;.…”