Characterization of elementary scenarios for multi-hazard safety assessments of learning facilities

Ensuring the children’ safety from natural hazards is one of the main concerns of decision-makers in hazard-prone territories. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, fire and other hazards pose a serious threat to children, due to both direct safety threats and reduction of school attendance. In this context, Governments assigned a top priority to school safety, as a target of the disaster risk reduction strategies and development. With several frameworks, the UN Members agree to pursue the school safety, and to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all, by building and upgrading safe educational facilities. In order to attend the school safety commitments, decision-makers need to plan the strategies and the actions for upgrading the school safety. Therefore, the decision-making process requires a support tool for the delineation of rational and effective safety upgrading strategies and plans. Considering such requirements, the SPRINT-Lab researchers of the University of Udine developed the VISUS (Visual Inspections for the definition of Safety Upgrading Strategies) methodology. VISUS aims at facilitating the decision-making process in the definition of safety upgrading strategies, through technical and objective assessments. In this context, this research work focuses on the definition of a pre-codified approach to collect data during the surveys and to elaborate the acquired information, in order to assess the safety critical issues and the esteemed cost for safety upgrading interventions. The outcomes lead to the definition of VISUS guides to use for the implementation of the VISUS methodology in international projects for the safety assessment of learning facilities.