Perception on seismic risk: the importance of knowledge in landscape analysis for a social awareness and resilience

Περίληψη

The earthquake that hit the Po Plain from May to June 2012 has highlighted the lack of seismic hazard perception within the civil population of this area in northern Italy. This assumption represents a starting point driven to indentify effective strategies to empower the population towards local or regional hazards consciousness and territorial risk assessment. Could deeper and widespread knowledge in earth sciences contribute for social seismic awareness? The earthquake experience has increase within the society the attention to landscape analysis and correlated territorial risks ? The spatial geographic information may reach throughout the visualization of uncertainty a differentiate and broader audience? This paper explores the role of earth sciences knowledge as strategy to overcome the gap between professionals (scientists) and civilians in disaster and risks. The study outline how the citizen science perspective represent an alternative opportunity to better divulgate and even to capacitate the population on hazard territorial evaluations in order to achieve a safer human environment and collective resilient responses. The study focuses on the young generation communities of the Emilia Romagna region, for whom the earthquake experience has changed their understanding on seismic local hazard and risk and their seismic awareness during the last two years.