ALBERT

Description: Worldwide, there is a shift from hazard to risk communication in order to increase societies’ earthquake risk awareness and, consequently, their willingness to take protective actions. So far, little research has been conducted on how to design user-centred seismic risk products, which would allow societies to take informed decisions. Only if well designed and tailored to the end users’ needs, these products have the potential to increase societies’ risk awareness and, in turn, their resilience towards earthquakes. We thus applied a transdisciplinary approach by co-designing with experts from different disciplines multiple versions of rapid impact assessments, earthquake risk scenarios, and seismic risk maps, which we then tested with the Swiss public and professional stakeholders of the society (e.g., authorities, civil protection). To this end, we conducted several workshops with professional stakeholders in 2021 and two surveys with the Swiss public in 2022 and 2023. The surveys both contained a between-subjects experiment, which allowed us to assess which version of the products is correctly understood, best perceived, and triggers people to take protective actions. At the conference, we will present the results of those studies and provide evidence-based recommendations on how to design user-centred rapid impact assessments, earthquake risk scenarios, and seismic risk maps. This should support institutions responsible for public communication to add risk products to their communication strategy to effectively inform the society about seismic risk and, consequently, increase their risk awareness and intention to take protective actions.

Description: Strong earthquakes are followed by numerous aftershocks, which themselves can be strong and devastating, sometimes even stronger than the initial main event. Although earthquakes cannot be predicted, the occurrence of aftershocks in space, time, magnitude and numerosity follows several universally observed empirical laws. Operational earthquake forecasting (OEF) systems aim to provide a probabilistic assessment of expected earthquake occurrence in near-real time, enabling informed decision-making for civil protection, authorities, the public, or other user groups. While few agencies worldwide have OEF systems in place, most countries, even those in regions of high seismic hazard, only estimate the time-independent, long-term earthquake probability as part of their seismic hazard and risk assessment, which serves a different user group involved in long-term decision making. This lack of OEF systems may be due to a lack of data, knowledge, resources, or guidance required to build them. With a plethora of forecasting models and testing schemes published every year, it is difficult to choose the most appropriate ones. On top of technical choices involved in the development and testing of forecasting models comes the additional challenge of communicating forecasts to users. In our study, we conducted an elicitation of expert views on these topics, aiming to provide good practice recommendations for the development, testing and communication of earthquake forecasts. We applied the Delphi method – with two surveys and one workshop – to identify consensus and dissent among a group of 20 international earthquake forecasting experts on these issues, and here present the results of this elicitation.

Description: To design user-centred and scientifically high-quality outreach products to inform about earthquake-related hazards and the associated risk, a close collaboration between the model developers and communication experts is needed. In this contribution, we present the communication strategy developed to support the public release of the first openly available European Seismic Risk Model and the updated European Seismic Hazard Model. The backbone of the strategy was the communication concept in which the overall vision, communication principles, target audiences (including personas), key messages, and products were defined. To fulfil the end-users' needs, we conducted two user testing surveys: one for the interactive risk map viewer and one for the risk poster with a special emphasis on the European earthquake risk map. To further ensure that the outreach products are not only understandable and attractive for different target groups but also adequate from a scientific point of view, a two-fold feedback mechanism involving experts in the field was implemented. Through a close collaboration with a network of communication specialists from other institutions supporting the release, additional feedback and exchange of knowledge was enabled. Our insights, gained as part of the release process, can support others in developing user-centred products reviewed by experts in the field to inform about hazard and risk models.