Let our children teach us! A review of the role of education and knowledge in disaster risk reduction

This review examines good practices to reduce disaster risk through education, knowledge, and innovation, and focuses on activity in education, public risk awareness, training and research in order to meet two new initiatives to achieve this goal: the ActionAid schools project “Disaster Risk Reduction through Schools,” and a two-year campaign launched by the UN ISDR Secretariat “Disaster Risk Reduction Begins at School.” This review covers the key activities relative to Priority 3 of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters. The key activities listed in the framework are knowledge management, education, and risk awareness. Among the topics, which range from university research and training to primary school curricula and the media’s treatment of risk reduction, three subjects are central: teaching hazards and risk reduction in schools, schools as centers for community based disaster risk reduction, and physical protection of schools from natural hazards. The review concludes with a section on strategy for three priority areas: promotion of more and better teaching of hazards and risk reduction, development of schools into models and centers of participatory risk reduction in the community, and the protection of schools against multiple hazards.