Genius Video, shame about the website

The video posted below is brilliant! Watch for yourself and see what I mean. If you want to get across a clear message about preparing for an earthquake I think this is excellent - especially for the teenage/young adult demographic. However, and it is a BIG however, the website that it suggests the viewer visit is VERY dry! I think teens and young people may see this and visit the website, and then be put off immediately. Now I can't speak for every teen and young person, but the information is NOT presented in this format. But if you're dad who is in his 30's or 40's it would be a good place to visit!



Any way check the video out, as it deserves to be watched and make your own decision about the website, which has some very useful information on it including video's on preparing. Alternatively I have designed a website aimed at children and youth at www.edu4hazards.org which is useful for those in the 9-14 age range. I suppose there is a gap for the twenty something demographic, which I will try and address next!

In the meantime, it would be useful if those attempting to raise awareness examined their own awareness of the younger market!

Using Second Life as an educational Resource for DRR

I have been playing around in Second Life and examining its application for educational use. There's quite a community in there and it is possible to set up one for an organization or educational establishment. I wanted to set up a UNISDR island starting with educational stuff, links to podcasts etc. I believe this to be a great opportunity to reach a lot of people in an unconventional way. I know the US EPA have a boat in Second Life for instance which has been rendered precisely like one of their research vessels, but this is of limited educational use. I have also discovered that NOAA have an island in second life I want to attempting to create a disaster island scenario, which is almost like a disaster themed 'fun park' where hazards occur and you have to react in the most appropriate way...flying would have to be disabled for people's avatar's (their second life persona) and rewards given for reacting appropriately and surviving...There are ways of embedding url's ino second life and I have already done so in the technology educators island. There is an opportunity to do this with a group of islands in second life known as the scilands If anyone wants to be involved in this exciting project let me know and we can start creating!

Edu4hazards.org available in Norwegian - More translation needed.

Over a year ago I designed and built a website aimed at enabling
children and youth to know what appropriate measures to take before
during and after a hazard event. The initial idea came about because
the students I teach often travel abroad on holiday or visiting
family in areas where there are high risks of earthquakes, tornadoes
and hurricanes. Consequently the design of the site reflects this and
the front page of the site is a suitcase with eight labels that say
'earthquake', 'hurricane' etc. Once clicked on the main information
about how to react to the hazard appears. It i purposely not too
wordy and the advice is simple and widely accepted. The site has been
very successful and without marketing generates 50,000 hits monthly
and growing. I have used the site to deliver DRR messages in schools
in London very successfully; using the site as a stimulus and then
carrying out some of the advice with children such as 'duck, cover
and hold' for earthquakes, practising the 'lightning crouch' and
deciding what other action may be taken in the event of a thunder and
lightning storm. Students have made their own films in a wide variety
of languages - Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, Russian, Urdu, Punjabi,
French, German and English in order to show what action to take for a
wide variety of these hazards. These are available through youtube
teacher tube and as video podcasts through the itunes store (type in
'edu4hazards').

The site and the multimedia techniques that I have been pioneering
have been accepted well in the international community of those
involved in DRR and was included as an example of good practice in
the UNISDR publication earlier this year. This is all well and good
and I am glad to receive recognition, but this was never the reason
for me carrying out this project. I wanted to make a difference and
highlight what I thought was lacking in education for DRR in
mainstream education - experiential learning techniques that make a
real impact on children and youth, allowing them to be prepared and
not scared. I have come to the attention of the UK Government, the
Council of Europe and many emergency managers in many local
authorities, where I have given presentations about this project.
However when I have asked for help for site translation their has
been an initial buzz followed by a hiatus, followed by a negative
response at a later date. But following my presentation at the
Council of Europe Meeting on Disaster Reduction at school, a
Norwegian colleague, offered to translate the site into Norwegian.
The main information on each one of the hazard pages has now been
translated, although the further information parts have not been. The
site will automatically come up in Norwegian if you are in Norway,
whereas the rest of the world currently gets the English site, but it
does not have to be like that! I am attaching a word document with
this principal information on and would appreciate any help that
colleagues could give in translation. I would add a link on the site
as I have done from the Norwegian version of the site to that
person's organisation! The Norwegian site can be viewed at: http://
www.edu4hazards.org/index_no.html

There has been a lot of discussion on this forum about education and
how to motivate children and youth to become agents for change for
DRR and I have seen this site coupled with the activities alongside
it do just that. Children show me there Emergency go-bags for
instance and I have even had parents talk to me about what to include
in them (there are photograph's on the site). There is now a
teacher's page on the site where teachers can explore how to use the
site with lesson plans and resources as well as a link to the new
social network for teachers wanting to make a difference in disaster
prevention at: http://edu4drr.ning.com

Please contact me if YOU can help make a difference, as doing this by
myself is not easy!

Edu4Hazards site in Norwegian!

The Edu4Hazards site has now been translated into Norwegian, or at least the pages with the most relevant information about how to prepare for and react to all eight of the hazards is! This graphic tells you how to react to an earthquake for instance!

New social network by and for teachers who want to make a difference in disaster prevention.

I have created a social network by and for teachers who want to make a difference in disaster prevention. There are many teacher carrying out disaster prevention worldwide, using a variety of different techniques and pedagogical approaches. This new site is to highlight examples of good practices and while allowing teachers to upload resources or plans and attach them to their discussions. When we have a reasonable number of teacher signed up, we will host a series of live chats where practitioners and teachers can share experiences and ideas. Vist the site and sign up for an account. It is free and easy to get going! http://edu4drr.ning.com

New UK based Education and DRR Social Tagging Site

In order to collate what projects are, have been or will be going on in the UK in terms of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) so that the curriculum materials that I am developing will use current best pracice as well as new ideas and methods, I have created a social tagging site called edu4drr, which can be found at: http://www.geo-world.org/edu4drr/ - I will eventually move it onto its own site but for beta testing, this is fine.

I am very excited about this mainly because I have never used PHP before, but have even managed to adapt and use the open source scuttle social tagging code as well as the del:icio:us API to do some other cool things. The idea is not mine though, and wsa developed initially about 6-9 months ago by UNISDR for the purpose of gathering good practice worldwide on DRR in general. As you can imagine the site is getting more users and there are 25 pages for DRR education alone. I thought about using their site and just filtering with a UK tag, but have learned a lot more by doing it this way!

I have also added it as an rss feed to this site in the menu on the right »»»

DRR Education with 'new' families

I was thinking to day about DRR materials and education in particular as I was teaching a class too my 17 year old students, highlighting the need for education but also acknowledging that despite knowledge about earthquakes etc, simple safety advice is often ignored or people 'put off' doing anything about it. As part of my literature review for my PhD I have been examining psychology texts related to people making hazard adjustments in and around the home after public education programmes: "Much of the empirical research carried out in the USA, has examined how people rate their vulnerability in relation to the risks. In particular it has been found that many are aware of earthquake risks, for example, but that this is rated much lower in importance than perceived risks from crime and pollution. However anxiety about earthquakes coupled with an internal locus of control can lead to an increased rate of adjustment adoption. Additionally being married and having children also leads to greater adjustment adoption, but length of time lived in a place where hazards exist lead to less. This tends to beg the following question: Why haven’t Disaster Risk Reduction practitioners targeted ‘new’ families through ante and neo-natal groups, for instance, showing how simple adjustments can protect both them and their young family?"

Is this a fair question and are there any examples of this being carried out and if so what were the results? Is there any evidence for a change in hazards adjustments as a result?

New categories on edu4hazards site

I’ve added an avalanche (http://www.edu4hazards.org/avalanche.html ) and a lightning strike (http://www.edu4hazards.org/lightning.html ) category to the edu4hazards.org website. While carrying ut the research for the lightning strike pages I came across advice about the lightning crouch (http://www.edu4hazards.org/lightning_crouch.html ) which I didn’t know about initially but have since researched in more depth. I decided to ask many teachers and Emergency Planning Officers in the UK about what they would do and many thought that lying down was the safest thing to do if caught out in the open....apparently not the advice given to the US Army, or by NOAA! What you should do is follow the instruction given on the lightning crouch pages that I have put up! It seems that this is a real gap in knowledge and there seems to be a lot of ‘assumed knowledge’ about the safety if cars - people think its the rubber tyres and not the metal cage that will save lives and are consistently giving bad advice about what to do. I found this both interesting and shocking and am now carrying out further research among PE and geography teachers in the UK as well as outdoor education specialists to poll their knowledge and correct any misconceptions! Watch this space for more updates soon...

Response to the Pitt Review of Flooding in the UK 2007

Disaster and Development centre, University of Northumbria.
Response to the Pitt Interim Review on the 2007 Floods.

Following the Pitt Review of the 2007 floods, the Disaster and Development Centre would like to outline its position regarding the vulnerabilities and capacities of children and how this can be addressed through simple and cost effective education.

Within the interim review, children are highlighted as being part of the vulnerable population alongside the elderly and disabled, but their capacities and resilience at such a time is not made explicit. Research has shown that children are not only aware of the dangers within their environment, but they are full of ideas for preparedness. (Twigg, 2005, Sharpe 2007). Additionally, research has also indicated that children have the capacity to perceive high-risk, low-probability disasters (including flooding) and that they are able to communicate these risks in a way that can influence the actions of those around them (Ronan & Johnston, 2003; Sharpe, 2007).

This capacity should be encouraged and implemented through the schools curriculum and outside of school in community and youth groups such as through the Scouts movement for instance. There are already websites set up to offer advice specifically for children who are at risk from a range of natural hazards such as www.edu4hazards.org and www.fema.gov/kids. Consequently, children and youth are better informed about preparedness than their parents. This should not only be recognised but utilised further.

Within the report, there were two stories of community spirit involving children and youths who are often seen as ‘ruffians’(sic) but who waded through floodwater distributing supplies and water, for instance. These community acts can be made less risky with advance training. In countries where natural hazards are very much part of daily life, youth teams have been trained in first aid, community liaison and preparedness, including making and sharing hazard maps within their communities. (e.g. Plan, El Salvador)This has earned them both the respect of their peers and others in the community, while providing an invaluable service in terms of Disaster Risk Reduction. The result is that awareness of such events are increased and although the outcome of the next major hazard event is not known the community are better prepared. It would also put children and youth back at the heart of the community, making them feel less disenfranchised with society and less likely to be a cause of both perceived and real nuisance.

This is borne out by youth-oriented projects in the USA - http://www.certla.com/links/teensert.htm for example - that address community preparedness to disaster threats. Specifically they argue that, skills in first aid and disaster event response are taught to teenagers, but that this also fosters the ability to address other challenges, to create a community which works together irrespective of the threat, and to apply values and attitudes to any societal challenge. This holistic approach has also been carried out in Turkey (http://www.ahep.org/ev/egitim5_0e.htm) and many other countries around the world. Examples of good practice can be seen in the UNISDR publication, Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School (http://www.unisdr.org/eng/about_isdr/isdr-publications/11-education-good-practices/education-good-practices.pdf )

The United Kingdom Government gives aid packages to countries struck by natural disaster through the Department for International Development (DFID), in which a tranche of the aid must be spent on future mitigation and education projects. However we are currently not doing the same within our own borders. We must be able to learn from such events and implement good practice sooner rather than later. In other words striking while the flood is still very much in the minds of those affected by it. After the Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami there was a raft of education programmes implemented by NGO’s working in the field as well as governments. Government money should be spent on mitigation and preparedness that go beyond structural measures, allowing those living on the flood plain to understand the risks and be better prepared for future events, which could come as early as this winter.

The word ‘education’ was mentioned once in the entire document, but within the context of public education about flood insurance. Although this is a useful contribution to future preparation and mitigation, it is not necessarily the most practical and cost effective step for householders to take. The first chapters make note of the events and the impact on communities, highlighting the lack of preparedness regarding access to clean water. But it is clear that people did not stock pile water for drinking and for other uses before the floodwaters arrived, and it is not clear whether this message will be clear and accessible in the future.

Furthermore, it was noted by Sir Michael Pitt, the reports author, that people should prepare by having emergency flood kits including a battery operated radio, mobile phone etc, but this is of limited use if adequate drinking water is not kept aside as well – something NOT highlighted by the report or put forward as one of the 72 Interim Conclusions! The message from the government needs to be clear and consistent and made accessible to every home, including children and the elderly – a ‘generic emergency kit’ may not be sufficient – different people have different needs – but the basics should be known by all. This can be achieved by communicating with those working within the field of Disaster Risk Reduction and Education, such as the authors of this response and implementing their advice with regards to preparation, mitigation and planning. Many have worked in the field for may years both in the UK and abroad and have learned and written about what makes for good practice and knowledgeable about how to implement such practices here in the United Kingdom.

To conclude, it is clear that children and are vulnerable to hazard events, but that does not mean that they cannot be prepared. Simple first aid and DRR training alongside practical advice given through the citizenship and geography curriculum’s can be implemented alongside clear advice given to all sections of society about how to prepare for and cope with a natural hazard event.

It has long been argued that hazards needn’t become disasters and that it is human interaction and in some cases inaction within the environment that allows such disasters to develop. Education is key to reducing the impact of hazards on the community, while being both sustainable and cost effective. Children can be involved in problem-solving and planning for both urban and rural flood risk reduction, through careful land-use planning, community-based early warning systems, and contingency planning for livelihood asset protection. This education does not need to be didactic, but should be practical, useful and a focal point for rebuilding communities that have lost much in the floods.





References:

Ronan, Kevin. R. & Johnston, David. M. (2001), School Children’s Risk Perceptions and Preparedness: A Hazards Education Survey in The Australian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies

Ronan, Kevin. R. & Johnston, David. M. (2003), Hazards education for youth: A quasi-experimental investigation in Risk Analysis vol. 23, no5, pp. 1009-1020 [12 page(s) p 1011

Sharpe, J.E. (October 2007) How new media for Disaster Risk Reduction Education can be used effectively as a tool for and generating educational materials by children and youth, for children and youth. European and Mediterranean Workshop on Disaster Reduction at School.

Twigg, J (March 2004) Disaster Risk Reduction: Mitigation and Preparedness in Development and Emergency Programming. Humanitarian Practice Network Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London, UK

New vodcast!

I have just completed the first education and DRR vodcast! Filmed earlier this week by my students and edited by them today, I have now added the appropriate xml tags and all will be revealed soon. You should be able to subscribe via i-tunes and I aim to have many more in the coming months. Edu4Hazards itunes vodcast or if you want the xml feed - Edu4Hazards rss feed

Website Update - www.edu4hazards.org

I sent the site out to a couple of hazards list sand there have been favourable reviews so far. I have also taken classes through the site at school, which has also been well received. I have added flash floods to the site as well as a pdf link to a book version and a link on the menu to the emergency kit! I aim to add a button where kids can upload photographs of their own education kits, which will be a good way of further engaging kids to think about planning for emergencies as well as getting them to reuse the site. I have registered the domain name now and the site can be seen at:

http://www.edu4hazards.org

Enjoy!

edu4hazards website

I teach so many children who now travel abroad often on holidays to locations such as India, Pakistan, USA, Turkey, Iran etc and it struck me that they, and many other children are then at higher risk of falling foul hazards such as earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, flash floods etc and so last weekend, I locked my self away and built a web-site to deal with this. The result is currently in beta testing at: http://www.geo-world.org/edu4hazards but if all goes well and I clear image rights etc I will launch on its own dedicated website. I sent it out to the JISCMAIL server and there have been some positive replies about its usefulness. More importantly is that children that I teach have been overwhelmingly positive (something that is quiet rare for teenagers!)

Following on from this I decided to mock up a book version to support it, I thought that a pocket sized book, with a wipeable pen could be a useful and fun educational tool as well. The book includes a checklist for putting together a hazards emergency rucksack, which children could take with them or encourage their parents to take, I reiterated the point to children that I taught, that they will now know more about how to survive these sorts of hazards than their parents and they should talk to them about it.

Participatory Rural Apraisal

While researching different methods of Community based Disaster maagment and past education projects I read a very interesting article in the Bulletin of Volcanology (March 2004) on how Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) was used in Ambae Island, Vanuatu in order to allow scientist to understand important local perspectives while avoiding ‘top down’ plans imposed by previously by outside agencies. Past attempts at volcanic hazard awareness involved scientists visiting villages and showing video’s while distributing hazard maps in French and English.

However this did not lead to a better understanding of the hazards faced by the community because the maps contained to much geological information, which only served to confuse the local population. It was previous projects such as this this that caused mistrust among the community and further heightened when in 1995 an evacuation order was given, after increased activity at the crater, but an eruption did not ensue.

Consequently the PRA approach sought to be somewhat less dogmatic aiming to listen rather than lecture, while emphassising visual and diagrammatic techniques over verbal ones. This led to community mapping, followed by hazard mapping and the planning and discussion of evacuation routes. Most importantly, community hazard maps were simplified using three solid colours to indicate the principal hazards and the areas they were most likely to affect. Additionally the text was translated into Bislana (the local langauge).

Although the project was effective in many areas and the local population are no doubt better prepared, there were some interesting outcomes from the project that I would like to highlight and give thoughts on:

1. It was thought that ‘short and effective’ visits were best to undertake when carrying out the hazard mapping tasks so that it fitted in with community life, such as making funeral preparations, festival preparation and other normal events. I can see how this would be beneficial as one of the aims was not to be too intrusive. However, I wondered whether it would have been possible to hold yearly evacuation drills, even making a competition between villages to evacuate quicly and efficiently. Otherwise, there may be a danger that the work carried out would be slowly lost.
2. The society on Ambae is still extremely patriachal with a number of high ranking males (usually the head chief and assistant chiefs) making decisions about disaster management with no discussion or information sharing at all with women and children. Women only workshops highlighted this difference and many women reported that this is what has happened in the past when hazard warnings have been given by the authorities. This clearly places women and children at risk as they are not informed enough to make their own decisions about when to evacuate an area. The researchers working with the communities argued that including women and youths on the disaster committe improves the efficiency of transferring decision making deliberations to their sections of the community. What I found interesting was that although the researchers were trying to move away from ‘top down’ approaches, the community they were working with had there own ‘top down’ approach! For example, the chiefs communicating only with high ranking males who then made decisions about disaster risk, arguably placing the more vulnerable sections of their society - namely women and children most at risk!

Would it be possible to communicate with the chiefs the importance of full community participation in hazard management. How did the chiefs feel when ‘outsiders’ went to the crater without their permission when previously only high ranking males were allowed? It is most likely that they were marginalised in their own backyard and a parallel could be drawn between this and how women and children may feel in the community about disaster management that they are not involved in discussion. It could also be pointed out that when previous ‘experts’ in the form of visiting scientists ordered them to evacuate, some did not trust them and did not leave their homes.

What would have changed their minds?

Part of reducing hazard vulnerability is understanding the dangers, knowing how to evacuate and where to. If all sections of the community are aware of this, they can work together to overcome the difficulties and dangers presented by geohazard events.

What I am curious about now is whether this approach has now been taken in Vanuatu or in other communities that have such patriachal views? If anyone can help me out with this I will be interested and you can post a reply to this here

Aims of PhD

One of the principal aims of a PhD should be originality, either in thought, method of research or results. I have been thinking about this and have tried to pinpoint what my research aims for:

1. Hazard Education will be examined and critiqued alongside different approaches to hazard vulnerability. Although not necessarily ‘original’ this will provide the basis and arguments into why geohazard eductaion has had limited success in the past. For example, taking a ‘dominant’ approach, which is often technocratic, bureacratic and top down in its appraoch, thereby marginalizing the people it is supposed to be helping.
2. Via research, interviews and workshops I hope to pinpoint ways in which future geohazard education projects can be more successful at educationg at risk and vulnerable communities. The overall aim of this is to help vulnerable communities percieve the hazards that they face and take measures to minimise their vulnerablity.
3. Once this information has been collected and carefully analysed, I aim to produce a portable package of materials and guidelines on community based geohazard education that can be used by NGO’s and INGO’s working in high risk areas to effectively involve communities in their own vulnerability reduction projects.
4. The final stage of the research will be to implement the use of the package in two different projects, addressing different hazard needs, possibly in Nepal and Indonesia. Through ongoing monitoring evaluation I should be able to see how affective the guidelines and materials are. It is important that I act as an initial facillitator to education programmes and then step back and let community groups and local educators or community workers evaluate their own risks and vulnerabilities and are then guided on how to be prepared and to reduce the risks to heir community.

Paper for Special Issue on Children and Disasters Children, Youth and Environments

It is 22:52 now and I have just finished my paper which is provisionally entitled: 'How children's vulnerability in disasters can be reduced by their involvement and empowerment through community based education and disaster prevention.' I have outlined briefly what vulnerability is and how it relates to disasters before examining flood hazard mapping in Japan which does not appear to include children and youth in its programme, before looking at two case studies in depth that illustrate how children's vulnerability can be reduced through their involvement and participation. One project was carried out on the island of Luzon in the Philippines and the other was the Plan El Salvador project.

Both seem to be very interesting and more importantly seem to be making an impact on reducing vulnerability across all sectors of the communities in which they have been carried out in. I am a little tired now, so I am going to go to bed with the new(ish) Terry Pratchet book (called 'Thud') and zone out for a bit!

Tsunami Education Comic

While working with form group we looked at different media techniques for educating people about geohazards such as earthquakes and tsunamis. I have put this image of the tsunami risk in comic form, on this blog, but I will also update it on the geo-world site soon as well!
Click here to view it!
While on the subject of education I have also posted my design for a portable shake table here »

On the subject of my paper, I'll get back to it later today, almost completed 3,000 words now so it is getting there!

I haven’t added an entry for a while because I have been busy writing the paper for the children youth and environment journal. I have made quite a bit of headway, I have examined:

• Some hazard and hazard vulnerability theories and practices
• A literature review
• Two projects - one in the Phillipines and the other in El Salvador which used CBDM as a way of engaging people. Project in Phillipines was about increasing populations capacity to cope with geo-hazard events.
• I am now examining the Plan International evaluation with a view to analysing its effectiveness in community hazard mapping and how this has contributed to better awareness and capacity for hazard events.

In terms of planning, etc I have found Sente very useful, have used the British Library a couple of times too examine documents and publications, including Andrew Maskrey etc.

I have downloaded a useful piece of software called ‘Curio’ which is incredibly useful for project management etc. I have used it to help me plan the paper I was talking about earlier as well as drawing up a model for hazards increasing vulnerability beacause the hazard forces or encourages people to engage in practices that worsen the impacts of hazards. I have created a pdf of file here is a link to it first

Following my meeting with Maureen Fordham, I have put a few things into practice. Firstly I evaluated apiece of software that can be used for a bibliography and literature review based on her advice. End Note is supposed to be a cross platform biblography programme, but I have read that it wasn’t that compatible with OS X 10.4 and it was also very expensive. Instead I found a link to Sente on a forum. This is a great piece of software which check online library catalogues and databases for documents and even retrieves it in pdf format if available. The author. a synopsis and key words are then added to your own chosen category or sub-category by dragging the document.

I have managed to track down some of the texts suggested by Maureen on Amazon and these should be coming through any day soon.

Maureen also suggested that we submit a paper to Children, Youth and Environments is an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed
journal with a multidisciplinary audience of researchers, policy makers, and professionals in 143 countries around the world (http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/index.htm). The closing date for abstracts is 15th September. I have viewed the synopsis for abstracts and I think that tackling the subject of children’s vulnerability to hazards and how this can be redressed by empowering children to become involved in risk analysis (hazard mapping in El salvador for instance) It would be useful to find information on the effectiveness of such schemes.
Also might be useful to examine what role groups like COGSS would like to play in future.

16/07/06

Notes on ‘Methods of Delivery’

Again there were several methods of delivery noted in ‘Disaster Risk Reduction: Mitigation and Preparedness’.

•        Posters and leaflets are the most common form of strategy as they are relatively cheap to produce – However, the impact of this method is said to be weakened because of inappropriate images. People are moved by visual images more than verbal ones and tend to remember them better, especially in societies with low literacy levels: THEREFORE: USING TSUNAMI CARTOON DRAWN BY BOY IN MY CLASS AND USING ONLY ONE WORD – ‘TSUNAMI’ is a good way of getting message across. NB – Need to get this scanned and put on web site!
•        Use of Demonstrations – Shake tables are often used in demonstrations. Other demonstrations may also be useful for people to fully comprehend hazards: egg tectonics, clamp and pencil, sound waves (clicking fingers) etc. NOTE: SHAKE TABLES THAT CAN BE CARRIED AROUND ESAILY – VARIABLE SPEED DRILL TABLE DESIGN OR CRANK SHAFT DESIGN, MAY BE MORE USEFUL AS THEY CAN BE MADE AND DISTRIBUTESD TO EDUCATORS AND PEOPLE WILLING TO DEMONSTRATE.
•        Hazard Risk Maps: Important that they are presented in an easily understood format - Is it possible to use 3D mapping and photographic montages so that maps are less abstract – especially to people with lower literacy levels. When hazard maps are being drawn up sites could also be photographed? (i.e. Parts of volcano slope where pyroclastic surges may occur, or safer areas that population should evacuate to!)
Entertainment Media: In past radio soap operas have been used to get across the dangers of hurricanes – Teimpos de Huracanes (Hurricane Season) in Central America. I thought that working with school and producing a DVD in a ‘Bollywood’ style to show people the dangers of earthquakes and of the importance of building design and of duck and cover exercises. In particular a good and easily remembered song needs to be written and a good dance routine!! I have approached the director media at school and we have started to talk about possible locations for filming etc. gain the idea is to get students to be involved writing and producing the film. If this was successful it could either be exported and used in education projects or used as a model for villages/ schools to make their own versions, using a pre written format – Much like a village play - Very useful in places like Indonesia where this is a useful way of learning about past or myths and legends – can be used in an educational way – Shadow Puppets?

14/07/06

Having read chapter sent to me by John Twigg on Education, Information and Communications on geohazards, I have had some thoughts and have made some annotations to the text.

•        It is important to understand the community one is seeking to help. This is more than just knowing a little about the culture, any project needs to communicate with local population what their needs, priorities and indigenous knowledge and capacity.
•        Although risk management and education about risks posed is important, but must be informed by communities experience and perception of the risk. There is probably an argument therefore of setting up education projects while having a close dialogue with local population.
•        Visualisation, talk and modelling etc are the best ways to analyse and transmit knowledge. Is it also possible to get local people involved in the measurement, monitoring of hazards – i.e. appointing someone to be responsible for looking for warning signs and communicating dangers at the local level. (same principal as putting seismographs in UK and US schools – i.e. it generates interest and provokes people into wanting to find out more…However it is important that this information is available and accessible when the time comes.
•        There is an argument that vulnerable people can explain their perspectives clearly to outsiders if given the opportunity to do so…How did Kubilay find this in Pakistan? What was the most effective method? Workshops? Talking/Meetings? Teaching? Informal chats?
•        Many disaster programmes should include communications and awareness raising: Public Education is often undertaken by people without special training or skills which results in ‘fragmented, one-off, short-term interventions’. Education therefore needs to be an ongoing basis, developing over time as local knowledge becomes moiré sophisticated’.