An integrated earthquake vulnerability assessment framework for urban areas

Abstract

In this paper, an integrated urban earthquake vulnerability assessment framework, which considers vulnerability of urban environment in a holistic manner and performs the vulnerability assessment for the neighborhood scale, is proposed. The main motivation behind this approach is the inability to implement existing vulnerability assessment methodologies for countries like Turkey, where the required data are usually missing or inadequate for the decision-makers in prioritization their limited resources for risk reduction in the administrative units from which they are responsible for. The methodology integrates socio-economical, structural, coastal, ground condition, vulnerabilities (fragilities), as well as accessibility to critical services. The proposed methodology is implemented for Eskisehir, which is one of the metropolitans of Turkey. In the implementation of the proposed framework, geographic information system (GIS) is used. While the overall vulnerabilities obtained for neighborhoods are mapped in GIS, the overall vulnerabilities obtained for buildings are visualized in 3D city model. The main reason behind using different mapping and visualization tools for vulnerabilities is to provide better ways for communicating with decision-makers. The implementation of the proposed vulnerability assessment methodology indicates that an urban area may have different vulnerability patterns in terms of structural, socio-economical, and accessibility to critical services. When such patterns are

Review Article: A comparison of flood and earthquake vulnerability assessment indicators

“…Structural elements comprise of, for example, building type, material, age, and number of floors (e.g. Giovinazzi and Lagomarsino, 2004;Kircher et al, 2006;Duzgun et al, 2011). Building occupancy refers to the building-usage type, for example commercial, industry or residential.…”

“…However, from the literature review it appears that social indicators are more often used in flood vulnerability studies than earthquake vulnerability studies. Examples of earthquake social vulnerability indicators are population density Pergalani, 1996, Peng, 2015), household education level (Duzgun et al, 2011, Schmidtlein et al, 2011, shelter demand (e.g. measured using "perception of population to leave their homes" indicator), health-impact-related vulnerability as part of SYNER-G's socio-economic vulnerability component (Pitilakis et al, 2014), and household and population structure as used in GEM's socio-economic vulnerability index (Khazai et al, 2014a).…”

Proposal for Holistic Assessment of Urban System Resilience to Natural Disasters

“…The main purpose of infrastructure is supply support and connectivity of other urban components and system as a whole. Attributes of transportation infrastructure considered in resilience assessment are road hierarchy, travel cost (measured in time), average speed, average daily traffic and key important transportation components (bridges, tunnels, crossroads, underpasses) [14,18]. Key important transportation components could be described as similar to important buildings by capacity curves and spatial characteristics.…”

“…Most of them are offering conceptual framework with guidance towards a more resilient urban system without concrete tools and methods for assessment of resilience [4,17]. Duzgun et al [18] offer a vulnerability assessment of multiple urban components (community, buildings, accessibility to critical services) individually but do not include their interactions. Carreño et al [7] and Salgado-Galvez et al [8] propose composite risk index including different parameters but ignore transportation networks and system connectivity.…”

GIS Based Measurement and Regulatory Zoning of Urban Ecological Vulnerability

“…In recent years, many research findings on vulnerability have emerged in various fields, including basic research on the concept and connotation of vulnerability and its theoretical framework [5], and climate and environmental change and its impact on issues such as sea levels [6], forests [7], social development [8] and the city [9]. Vulnerability research is also used in natural disaster research, such as flood [10], earthquake [11], tsunami [12], snowstorm [13] and fire [14]; in research on water and land resources [15]; on poverty and employment [16]; and on traffic systems [17]. At the same time, vulnerability theory has been introduced into the field of urban research, in which city-related issues, such as diseases [18], terrain [19], and heritage [20] are being studied.…”