OMCF questionnaires - Surveying volcanic crises exercises: From open-question questionnaires to a prototype checklist

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Volcanic crisis exercises are usually run to test response capabilities, communication protocols, and decision-making procedures by those agencies, such as volcano observatories and/or Civil Protection authorities, with responsibilities to cope with scenarios of volcanic unrest with inherent uncertainty. During the last decades, the use of questionnaires has been increased to evaluate people’s knowledge on volcanic hazards and their perception of risk, which could affect their preparedness to respond to emergency measures plans. In this paper, we show the study carried out within the EUROVOLC project in extracting information on the experience gained during volcanic-crisis exercises by the project’s participants and beyond. In particular, we first distributed an open-question questionnaire survey within the EUROVOLC-project community. Based on the results obtained, we developed a more user-friendly online multi-choice questionnaire that we submitted to different volcanological communities within and outside the project. From the answers to the on-line questionnaire, we extracted a prototype checklist for guiding those who design such exercises in the future. Here, we give details on the lessons learnt from this study, in particular about the need to increase training activities, to improve external (between players and general public/media) communication tools, equipment and protocols and to better define decision-makers needs. Our preliminary results confirm that this type of survey is a very useful tool for gathering information on participants' experience and knowledge, and to understand which data and information may be useful when designing exercises for scientists, emergency managers and others involved in a volcanic crisis.