EGU General Assembly 2007 GIFT Workshop

The general theme of the 2006 GIFT workshop is ”Geosciences in the City” – one of the themes of the coming International Year of Planet Earth, a program sustained by UNESCO and different Scientific Institutions throughout the world.

In 1950, 30% of the world’s population lived in cities. In 2000 it was 47% and this increasing trend still continues: in 2007 more than half of the world’s population will live in cities. Urban settings are exposed to pollution created by human activities, such as power plants (emission of CO2, CO, NO SO2, soot), traffic (CO2, CO, SOx, hydrocarbons, noise..;), industrial plants and water waste and runoff. While the impact of anthropogenic factors are continuous and usually easily understood by the general public, it is not always obvious how geological and natural factors influence our daily life because of their somewhat unpredictable nature (hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions…).

The purpose of the GIFT-2007 workshop is to illustrate how all these different factors interact and to make teachers and their students and, through them, the general public aware of the complexity of the environmental problems in urban areas.

Towns such as Rome and Istanbul, because of their long history, geographic/geological location and high concentration of inhabitants, represent areas where exposure and vulnerability to natural hazards are disproportionately high, and will be a main target for the GIFT workshop. In the first part of the workshop, the geological and natural setting of these towns will be discussed, together with the impact of natural hazards on modern cities. In the second part of GIFT-2007 we’ll discuss atmospheric pollution linked to high population density and other natural and anthropogenic factors, and the approaches that urban authorities use to mitigate them.

Information and activities that teachers can use in their classrooms to make their students aware of these problems and to stimulate reduction of energy consumption to a minimum, will also be an important aspect of GIFT-2007.

Please see the full brochure (PDF document, 9.3 MB) for more details.

Monday, 16 April 2007

• A short introduction to natural hasards in urban areas
  

  Fausto Guzzetti
  President
  Natural Hasard Section EGU

  • Presentation (PDF document, 347.1 KB)
• The roots of urban geology: the city of roma
  

  Renato Funiciello
  Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra
  Univeristà Roma-TRE, Italy

  • Presentation (PDF document, 17.6 MB)
• A town with the most precious stones in the world - (LIVING WITH GEOLOGY IN ISTANBUL)
  

  A. M. Celâl Sengör, Necdet Özgül, Mehmet Sakinç and Okan Tüysüz
  Istanbul Techical University
  Istanbul, Turkey

  • Presentation (PDF document, 28.8 MB)
• The dragon's head story: water/land conflict in shanghai
  

  Pinxian Wang
  State Key Laboratory of Marine Geology
  Tongji University
  Shanghai, China

  • Presentation (PDF document, 12.1 MB)
• High-density macroseismic survey in the city of rome
  

  Roberta Rosa, Francesca Cifelli & Francesca Funiciello
  Liceo Classico Vivona, and University of Roma Tre

  • Presentation (PDF document, 12.8 MB)
• The impact of earthquakes studied using a computer driven vibrating table
  

  Earth sciences-Biology and Physics teachers
  Abel Dubois, Cathy Labonne, Alison Hoang
  Students
  Lycée Marie Curie, Echirolles, France
• Guided tour of the vienna museum of natural sciences
  

  Herbert Summesberger
  or VISIT THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF EGU

Tuesday, 17 April 2007

• The August 2002 flood in Prague in the context of historical and recent floods in the czech republic
  

  Rudolf Brazdil
  Masaryk University, Brno
  Czech Republic

  • Presentation (PDF document, 8.2 MB)
• A short introduction to atmospheric sciences in urban areas
  

  Ulrich Pöschl
  President
  Atmospheric Sciences Section, EGU

  • Presentation (PDF document, 674.7 KB)
• The international charter space and majors disasters : a space response for risk management
  

  Selma Cherchali
  Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales
  Toulouse, France
• Milagro measurement campaign over mexico city metropolitan area
  

  Luisa T. Molina
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
  Molina Center for Energy and the Environment, USA

  • Presentation (PDF document, 6.2 MB)
• Bringing milagro sciences to the public, students and educators, through the windows to the universe website
  

  Roberta Johnson
  Education and Outreach, UCAR,
  Boulder, CO USA

  • Presentation (PDF document, 7.9 MB)
• The Copernicus journal for young scientists
  

  Dick van der Wateren
  EGU Press Officer
• Space and environment: classroom activities for the high school
  

  Nicole Herman
  Lycée Rooselvet, Reims, France

  • Presentation (PDF document, 7.4 MB)
• From 1910 to 2010 a new flood in Paris? - (A school program)
  

  Jean-Raphaël Deutsch
  Collège-Lycée Sévigné, Paris, France

  • Presentation (PDF document, 533.3 KB)

Wednesday, 18 April 2007

• Towards underground cities?
  

  Eduardo F.J. de Mulder
  Executive Director of the International Year of Planet Earth
  IYPE Secretariat, NGU, Trondheim, Norway
• The eco-village challenge: a student investigation and application of environmental land use planning
  

  Brittany Neptun
  NewTrier High School
  Northfield, Ill, USA

  • Presentation (PDF document, 1.6 MB)
• Sweet science - (Using sweets and biscuits to teach some ideas of geology to lower school students, aged 11-14)
  

  Sue Howarth and Alan Wollhead
  Tettenhall College, Tettenhall WV, and Bromsgrove School, Bromsgrove, Great Britain

  • Presentation (PDF document, 1.9 MB)

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