The Regional Service for Civil Protection and the Azores Fire Service (RSCPAFS), under the tutelage of the Regional Housing and Equipment Secretariat, will hold a Colloquium having as its theme Society, Culture and Risk: from the Memory of the Capelinhos Eruption to the Seismic Crisis of 1998.

Scheduled to be held on Faial Island, currently planned for 14, 15 and 16 December 2007, this Colloquium will, from a scientific and transdisciplinary perspective, consider the geophysical, psychosocial, cultural and institutional history of the Azores and most especially that of the Central Group of the Archipelago, given its specific and closer relation to natural disasters and the multiple human and sociological implications resulting from the activity of the Capelinhos Vulcano (1957) and the 1998 Seismic Crisis.

Promoted and coordinated by RSCPAFS, in partnership with the Centre for Social Studies of the School of Economics, Coimbra University – a body with which the Regional Service for Civil Protection and the Azores Fire Service has a Protocol of Cooperation in the field of Risk Studies -, this Colloquium, which will be open to the public, will number as participants several regional and national specialists, researchers, academics, historians, sociologists, technical and professional staff, institutional decision-makers, association leaders, and public administration staff.

Among the panelists of this scientific and cultural Colloquim are Eduardo Ferraz da Rosa (Overall Coordinator of the Colloquium), Alexandre Tavares, Caetano Valadão Serpa, Carlos Sousa Oliveira, Fernando Nascimento, João Arriscado Nunes, João Castro, João Luis Gaspar, José Decq Mota, José Manuel Oliveira Mendes, Julio da Rosa, Lúcio Cunha, Luis Meneses, Luisa Fortes da Cunha, Luisa Pedroso de Lima, Marcelo Firpo Souza Porto, Raquel Soeiro de Brito, Renato Leal, Ricardo Rodrigues de Barros, Ruben Rodrigues, Rui de Jesus Goulart, Urbano Bettencourt and Victor Rui Dores.

In conjunction with this Colloquium, several Documentary Exhibitions will be on view, focusing on the Capelinhos Vulcano, the Seismic Crisis of 1998 and the reconstruction and reconfiguration carried out on Faial Island in the second half of the twentieth century.