EGU22-2744, updated on 27 Dec 2022
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-2744
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Lessons learned from high-school students contribute to exposure database

Carla Barnaba, Antonella Peresan, Chiara Scaini, Valerio Poggi, and Alberto Tamaro
Carla Barnaba et al.
  • OGS- CRS, Trieste, Italy

The National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics – OGS is engaged in a wide range of educational and training activities for more than a decade, mainly focused on seismic risk mitigation through data acquisition in the field and practical stages. To by-pass the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2021 OGS started a new project, deployed in fully remote mode, to involve high-school students and increase their risk awareness and preparedness. The Project, named “CEDAS: building CEnsus for seismic Damage Assessment”, consists in the collection and elaboration of data which is included in the exposure database. Knowing the type and distribution of exposed assets, in particular buildings, is thus paramount for effective mitigation of disasters. The students classified and georeferenced the main residential buildings typologies of northeastern Italy, a seismically active area which suffered consequences from strong past earthquakes. During the project, 170 high school students collected reports on more than 3200 buildings, performing a statistical analysis of their results.

The project activities consisted of two main phases: plenary virtual training meetings and individual data collection and processing. Tutors held intermediate meetings with students for verification and discussion and brainstorming sessions with their professors to discuss the efficacy of their actions. All the meetings, including those for direct training of students, were delivered in virtual mode. The training material (including the meeting recordings) was then shared remotely with students and teachers through cloud solutions, and remained available during the whole project. In this way the students were able to both collect basic data for exposure assessment, and carry out their preliminary analysis using standard statistical tools available online. The comparative data analysis, performed for selected sub-areas and for the overall dataset, allowed them for some basic interpretation and a better understanding of the exposed assets situation in sub-areas. The CEDAS project, though motivated by the need to provide a practical solution to the COVID-19-related restrictions, went well beyond the emergency situation, as it demonstrated that training activities can contribute to both enhancing the available exposure dataset and to increasing risk awareness among young students in the region.

 

How to cite: Barnaba, C., Peresan, A., Scaini, C., Poggi, V., and Tamaro, A.: Lessons learned from high-school students contribute to exposure database, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-2744, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-2744, 2022.