Promoting Geo-awareness to Make Citizens the First Watchers of the Territory

Abstract

The earthquake occured in Tohoku (Japan) in 2011 showed that no matter how outstanding is the model of the mitigation of natural hazard, an earthquake can always surprise any studied attempt to contain a tsunami. I report this extreme example to draw the reader attention on how strong should be the commitment of the society in producing the optimal conditions to face natural hazard. Every country has a peculiar social context. If in the past we considered this as a secondary aspect, now we are obliged to recognize that the social context is of main importance when promoting mitigation of natural hazard. In this occasion I would like to refer to my experience as an educator in my country. Italy is a country where it is difficult to promote a dialogue between the Institutions and the citizens. The dialogue is difficult also among the communities of engineers, geologists and politicians. There is still a great confusion on the attribution of tasks and a lot of problems of difficult solution are related to corruption. In this context, education can play a crucial role and should be intensively addressed to promote geo-awareness in the citizens. People should learn about the geological site where their houses are built and get all the info necessary to understand if it has been done according to the law. Only in this way citizens become an active agent in promoting those changes without which an efficacious mitigation of natural hazard is impossible.