Development of a common (European) tool to assess earthquake risk communication

This paper reports work on an on-going EC project called KnowRISK aimed at reducing the seismic risk from non-structural elements in buildings. Specifically it reports work on the development of a European tool to assess the effectiveness of risk communication interventions and awareness raising training with middle and high school children in case study areas in Portugal, Italy and Iceland. It describes the difficulties research teams faced in agreeing a theoretical framework and in devising the survey tool. Although they all agreed it was essential to have a common survey if the findings from the research were to be compared across the three countries, one year into the two-year project two of the teams were moving in different directions. This was significant since some of the pre-intervention surveys had already been conducted. Both theoretical frameworks had merit and each of the questionnaires were capable of assessing the efficacy of the training. However, they were in no way comparable. Finally the paper details how these difficulties were resolved and a common questionnaire was devised that embodied virtues from both surveys. This was then applied in all three countries to provide comparable data, the findings from which will be reported elsewhere.