From “Earthquake and safety” school drills to “safe school-resilient communities”: A continuous attempt for promoting community-based disaster risk management in Iran

In 1996, a nationwide program was formulated by the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES) in Iran to be implemented in schools for increasing preparedness of students to potential earthquakes. Based on the so-called program “Earthquake and Safety” school drills, relevant education has been delivered to students on safety measures, self-protection and evacuation, followed by the annual drills. In 2015, this program was expanded by IIEES to communities living around safe schools. The main goal of this program called “Safe Schools-Resilient Communities” is to promote public participation in disaster management at local levels for increasing the resilience, developing local capacities for emergency response and adapting to conditions after a disaster. In this program, safe schools are considered as local bases for community-based disaster management. The main components of this plan includes preparing a series of instructions for earthquake risk assessment at local levels (including vulnerability check and diagnosis of weaknesses and strengths at each neighborhood) and developing institutional capacities at the selected safe schools to play necessary roles as centers for disaster risk reduction and management at each community. It also helps to build capacities for emergency response at each school in order to reduce earthquake impacts and to provide basic requirements for evacuees during the first few days after a disaster. In this paper, both programs and their achievements will be introduced and discussed.