When an earthquake comes, do you run or hide? Are there earthquake clouds before earthquakes? What are the causes of earthquakes? Although China is an earthquake-prone country, but these general knowledge around the earthquake is still quite confusing to many people.

Recently, held in Tangshan City, Hebei Province, the country's first earthquake popularization conference, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Emergency Management, China Earthquake Administration, Zheng Guoguang pointed out that when the earthquake came, the average person on the earthquake and knowledge of earthquake prevention and mitigation of the degree of knowledge directly determines the success or failure of earthquake prevention and mitigation work, "Currently, China's 'party leadership, The government is responsible for, departmental collaboration, social participation, the rule of law to ensure that 'the popularization of science and technology work situation has gradually formed, however, there are also seismic disaster prevention and reduction of science and technology innovation is not enough, the level of informatization is not high, the service capacity is not strong, and so many other problems".

How is effective earthquake science popularization? China's earthquake prevention and mitigation science popularization still need to make up what lessons?

Changing attitudes and learning to deal with earthquake risk***

Every time an earthquake strikes, people will always have this interrogation - why is there no forecast? In the rapid development of science and technology today, typhoons, floods and other natural disasters can be effectively predicted forecasts, with satellites, spaceships, human beings can also travel to space to analyze the mysteries of the universe, why can not grasp the earthquake's "fate"?

This expectation in Zheng Guoguang view, it is difficult to do. "From the internal structure, we can see the Earth as an egg, we live on the surface and the crust of the Earth is like the eggshell, and the mantle and the Earth's core is like the egg white and yolk, which all the time in the movement and change. Although mankind has now mastered the laws of many natural phenomena on the surface and in the sky, it still knows very little about the 'into the earth' piece. We have not even fully understood the internal structure of the 'eggshell', and we know nothing about the 'yolk' and 'white', so how can we grasp the movement - the laws of earthquakes? -earthquake laws?"

To this, Pan Huaiwen, party secretary of the China Earthquake Disaster Defense Center, agreed. "The difficulty of earthquake forecasting precisely reflects the limitations of human understanding of natural phenomena. Earthquake prediction forecasting is a difficult problem that is difficult to solve in a short period of time, despite extremely high public expectations. I think the first concept that should be established by the popularization of earthquake prevention and mitigation science is to make people face up to this difficulty and learn to live with earthquake risk***, especially the people in China's high-risk zone of earthquakes, who should have such scientific awareness and set up a precautionary mind against earthquakes in their daily lives." Pan Huaiwen said.

So, scientists are currently completely helpless against the occurrence of earthquakes? Not exactly. Wu Zhongliang, director of the China Earthquake Administration's Institute of Earthquake Prediction, used traffic management as an analogy: "A city can analyze which locations are more prone to traffic accidents and congestion by accumulating long-term observation of the traffic situation, and thus make preventive programs accordingly. Similarly, earthquake scientists can analyze the accumulated data on earthquakes since the past records were made, and generally give the probability of earthquakes occurring in certain areas in the next ten years, as well as the likelihood of encountering earthquakes of the largest magnitude in a hundred years, and at the same time, calculate the damage and impacts that may be produced when earthquakes of various levels are encountered in the place, and therefore put forward a strategy for preventing the risks, and guide the local earthquake prevention and mitigation capacity building in the aspects of construction, emergency drills and so on. This will guide the local earthquake prevention and mitigation capacity building in terms of construction, emergency drills, and so on. Although it is not possible to predict whether an earthquake will occur at a certain time in a certain place, the analysis and judgment on a large scale is still important for minimizing the risk of seismic disasters."

Updating knowledge and science research should also keep up with the times

"If the time is urgent and the earthquake comes suddenly, and the indoor floors have already begun to shake, don't panic, and you should quickly take shelter in the 'triangle of life'... ..." July 28, held in Nanjing, the community earthquake prevention and disaster reduction popularization of science propagandist speech contest, such knowledge of earthquake prevention and disaster reduction frequently appeared in the speaker's words. However, this "triangle of life" theory has been controversial in recent years in the seismological community at home and abroad.

"This issue has attracted our attention." Pan Huaiwen introduced, after some sorting, he found that, with the development of earthquake science and technology and changes in the social environment, many of the current inherent knowledge of earthquake prevention and mitigation needs to be updated, and there are many more circulating in the new media knowledge of earthquake self-help fallacies, the need for urgent correction. "For example, for many years, when publicizing knowledge about earthquake prevention, in addition to telling how to take emergency shelter, it also focuses on how to save oneself in the case of being buried after an earthquake. However, after more than a decade of development, the earthquake-resistant defenses of buildings in most parts of China, especially in cities, have been significantly upgraded, and residential seismic safety projects have been implemented in rural areas, so the likelihood of an earthquake leading to building collapse has been significantly reduced. Therefore, the knowledge of self-rescue after being buried and crushed is no longer appropriate to be the focus of the lecture, but should pay more attention to the building's seismic level, how to avoid panic jumping when an earthquake occurs, the knowledge of accurate risk avoidance is more important at the moment."

Wu Zhongliang also said that the earthquake involves human life, in the popularization of some small fallacies may bring adverse consequences. "For example, the concept of epicenter. The epicenter is an area, but many popular science explanations reduce it to a point, which can mislead people about the concept of earthquake-hit areas. In the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, people thought Wenchuan was the hardest-hit area, but in fact the Wenchuan, Qingchuan and Beichuan lines were the epicenter. This led to the fact that on the day after the earthquake, the majority of social relief teams and the media focused on Wenchuan, while ignoring several other hard-hit areas. Therefore, earthquake science must strive for accuracy."

Enriching the form of popularization of science more need to participate in the social forces

Earthquake prevention and mitigation, when the dolls to start. At present, our country has integrated knowledge of earthquake prevention and disaster reduction into the comprehensive practical activities of primary and secondary schools and the content of public **** safety education. The country has built 493 earthquake prevention and disaster reduction science education base, science demonstration school 5488, earthquake prevention and disaster reduction science and technology has been gradually into all levels and types of venues.

However, in Zheng's view, these are still far from enough compared with the public's needs for earthquake prevention and disaster reduction. "For a long time, China's popularization of earthquake prevention and mitigation science has been dominated by government inputs and teams of experts in the seismic system, and this approach, despite its advantages such as strong professionalism, has more obvious shortcomings. The promotion of earthquake knowledge is not grounded enough, the approach is not novel enough, and there is an obvious shortage of popularized and popularized products, etc. are all real problems."

Zheng pointed out that, on the one hand, the social coverage of earthquake prevention and mitigation science is still small, many schools "once a year" earthquake emergency drills in the form of popularization is far from enough. On the other hand, the popularization of science content and method is too old, many experts in the office to engage in popular science, the content of the science elaborated on the professional and unchanged for many years, it is difficult to be the public like, accept. "The times are changing rapidly, a generation of people have a generation of people like the language and lifestyle, earthquake popularization of science if not with the times, change the way, rich in content, can only be 'head hot', the dissemination effect will be bad is inevitable." He said.

At this time, social forces have entered a new vision of promoting earthquake prevention and mitigation popularization of science. Since 2017, as an earthquake-prone province, Sichuan Province has cooperated with a number of Internet enterprises to promote online popularization of science, using big data, accurate push, live broadcast, H5 and other Internet products to promote the construction of science information, but also introduced the most advanced science technology nowadays, such as virtual reality and augmented reality. All of these bring a refreshing experience for the public to learn about earthquake prevention and disaster reduction.

"The socialization and marketization of earthquake prevention and disaster reduction in China is low, and the broad participation of the whole society has not yet been formed. Therefore, in the process of modernization of science popularization, should widely mobilize social forces into the cause of science popularization, to promote more enterprises, market forces into the field of earthquake science popularization, in order to achieve diversification, innovation, the birth of popular science works for the people to enjoy." Zheng Guoguang said.

He pointed out that China has registered more than 2,000 social disaster prevention and mitigation enterprises, if properly guided will become an important science force. How the government can maximize the mobilization of social forces to carry out popular science activities to improve the quality of public science will become the next step must be done an important topic.

From China.org