Essay On Seismic Safety

The seismic waves recording, doorway to the building response

It’s very well known that the use of real data provides the teaching of Earth sciences and, particularly, of earthquake science, a quite effective approach (e.g. Kafka et al., 2006). Therefore we proposed the teachers to involve students into the practice of recording earthquakes, for locating them and for comprehending basic principles of local site and building response; we were however conscious that most of the teachers could lack adequate knowledge to convey such contents to the students. On this topic we have earned a lot of experience thanks to the "GeoScience Summer School" that every year drives some high school students of the Friuli area at the CRS lab (e.g. Liceo Magrini,

Pictures of damage and of the dangerous consequences related to the different elements (site, structures, non-structural and functional elements) collected during the field activity with the Italian National Fire Department in the 2009 L’Aquila and 2012 Emilia earthquakes (Grimaz and Maiolo, 2010; Grimaz, 2011) supported the didactic materials and in particular the presentations on seismic safety.

The key points that students (and everybody) should know about seismic safety are:

• seismic safety is the condition in which nobody gets hurt or dies as a consequence of an earthquake;

• safety assessment requires to consider every potential element that could hit the people and how the interaction between people and element could occur;

• seismic safety is related to a plurality of issues: the site, the structural response, the non-structural and functional elements.

Working on these concepts some classes developed their activity within the tracks named “La macchia nera” and “Fuga da Alcatraz” (Table 1) to apply the best practice and tackle emergency