The city became a tourist attraction in 1953, when restoration of Bam's Old Quarter began.There is little earthquake education in Iran although the International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology established a Public Education Department in 1990 to improve "the safety, preventing, and preparedness culture against the earthquake among all groups of the society". In October 2003, Bahram Akasheh, professor of geophysics at Tehran University, called the effects of public ignorance about earthquakes "poisonous".
