Specific drills with citizens in Portugal - the ShakeOut initiative

One example from Portugal is the equivalent to the international ShakeOut drills, locally named "A Terra Treme", where the focus is not on responders but on citizens, regardless of their operative connection with civil protection (http://www.aterratreme.pt/). Those drills are aimed at empowering citizens through a better response and improving their odds of surviving a major earthquake. In recent months, the National Authority for Civil Protection's website (http://www.prociv.pt) has been redesigned from the ground up, focusing on information about civil protection events and warnings, again trying to convey information on what is going on but also on what is expected to happen on a short notice time (mostly meteorological driven phenomena as other risks are extremely difficult or impossible to predict). With a new presence on the web, it has been possible to reach a vast audience, captured by the added interest of geo-referenced events which gives people the newly acquired notion of what is happening and above all, where it is. As communities become informed about the location of different hazardous events, they become motivated to plan and prepare, and Civil Protection wishes to take a step further, going direct to people's smartphones with an App that could disseminate geographically relevant warnings and best practices in the presence of any given known risk.

Note: See source document for full reference.

Cultural Factors: Attitudes toward environmental issues, Communication

Hazards: Natural hazards

Disaster Phases: Preparedness

Types of Actors Concerned: Non-active citizens, National civil protection body

Recommendations:

• Develop culturally aware disaster preparedness and response training
• Training programmes for citizens of all ages should be developed. These are necessary to increase citizens’ knowledge of and preparedness in case of disasters. The training activities should be organized on the basis of a training strategy and should take various forms, ranging from emergency drill to workshops