Fatima, Shizza

Advocacy for Tsunami Mitigation and Preparedness of U.S. Schools Along the Pacific Rim

Abstract eng:
According to the National Centers for Environmental Information, high tsunami risk exists for coastal regions in the United States along the Pacific Rim and existing schools located in these regions pose a unique challenge for both mitigation and planning.[1] With a committee of volunteer experts in tsunami hazard assessment and mitigation, a project is currently underway as a part of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s School Earthquake Safety Initiative (SESI) to identify schools in tsunami hazard zones. The goal of this project is to map schools located in tsunami hazard zones and to advocate for mitigation and planning to reduce school tsunami risk. This paper will document the process used to identify and map at-risk schools in these tsunami zones, and share advocacy and dissemination activities used to reach parents, teachers, and school administrators in these regions to help encourage them to mitigate risks posed to school children. The first phase of the project is identifying and mapping schools in the newly released ASCE 7 – 16 Tsunami design zone cross referenced by local/state evacuation zones. This work has identified 190 at-risk schools in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. The second phase will coordinate with state and federal tsunami programs and the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program to consider and conduct various advocacy, outreach and dissemination activities to offer useful and necessary information to school administrators, decision makers, and other stakeholder groups. This is in conjunction with EERI’s subprogram, “Creating an Advocacy Network for Improved School Earthquake Safety,” supporting similar dissemination efforts. Many existing informational resources reviewed by this project will be discussed, and references will be provided to selected exemplary and relevant resources. In the final phase, the project experts will consider and propose various policy recommendations that can be implemented to enhance mitigation and preparedness for schools in regions susceptible to tsunami hazards. The project is expected to be completed by late 2016.

Contributors:

Saiyed, Zahraa

Conference Title:

Proceedings of the 16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Conference Title:

16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering

Conference Venue:

Santiago (CL)

Conference Dates:

2017-01-09 / 2017-01-13

Rights:

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