Abstract:

Objectives:
The paper presents a joint action of Romanian researchers from earth sciences and civil engineering fields, in order to define and enhance a new approach in proactive earthquake education. This is a must, because Romania is exposed for more than a half of its area to great earthquakes from an intermediate depth source, called Vrancea region. The proposed action aims to consistently establish a relationship between research and training-education, then between dissemination and monitoring results, starting from pre-university school level.

Methodology:
The RoEduSeis project (www.roeduseis.ro) promotes intra-curricular and extra-curricular, theoretical and practical activities, based on information contained in materials developed on purpose and tailored on age groups, as brochures, newsletters, educational multimedia, an e-learning platform etc. In this way, the interaction between students and teachers and scientists/reasearchers is facilitated. By learning about seismology and how earthquake recorded data can be used in educational activities in schools, then creating building models and making experiments in order to explain the behaviour of civil engineering structures, under Romanian seismic conditions, a real awareness of possible seismic effects is reached. The students are taught to take measures to prevent negative outcomes. Several SeismoLabs were developed within the mentioned project and they allowed students and teachers to access the research infrastructure dedicated to the monitoring and evaluation of seismic motions with effects on natural and built environment, on population and life-lines etc.

Conclusions:
Creating earthquake disaster prevention awareness and disaster preparedness, a long-term seismic culture can be achieved by education within the current cycles. It shall be addressed to all levels of population from elder generation to younger ones and from usual people to the representatives of authorities. Since the strong seismic events from Vrancea earthquakes occur at rather great intervals, at few decades, we are now at a crossroad and the proactive attitude and behaviour needs to be extended.

Keywords:

Vrancea earthquakes, proactıve education, interactive activities.