CITIZEN SEISMOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM AND BEYOND

In the last decade citizen seismology has achieved a number of important goals, combining the interest for citizen science in general but especially in the field of disaster management and preparedness. Numerous initiatives in citizen seismology demonstrate that it is highly valuable for providing data from and to citizens quickly in time-sensitive cases, for providing data in poorly monitored locations, or for providing scientists, authorities and disaster managers with data related to earthquakes and its human elements.

One important target group of citizens are represented by students and teachers, the seismology@school concept being already validated globally through the success and impact of several projects and networking activities. The main objectives of the initiatives were to increase the level of knowledge of teachers and pupils on earthquake phenomena, earthquake effects, preparedness measures and also promoting the role of education and schools in disaster risk reduction. At the core of the initiatives are educational seismographs installed in schools, operated by teachers and students, acting as a trigger for the initiation of a full range of in class or out-of-school formal and informal activities. The model was also introduced in Romania in the framework of ROEDUSEIS project (Romanian Educational Seismic Network) and gave project initiators (a research & education partnership) the opportunity to draw a wealth of conclusions and to define the best ways to continue this initiative, as well as to focus on actions that offer sustainability and maximize the impact.

A key challenge for this and for any type of citizen science projects is to motivate citizens to participate, motivational techniques have varied widely. For students for example the inclusion of fun games in the application, facilitate the use of research instruments and softwares, giving access to a community of amateur seismologist, etc; for teachers: delivering tools and resources that can be use to inspire students and make them more interested in science topics, foster closer collaboration with formal, non-formal and informal science education providers

The study aim to demonstrate that the schools hold a great potential to operate as open science labs for citizen seismology, which will lead the realization of major community initiatives and projects, that demonstrate and build on the essential features of citizen science and public engagement with science.