Storm Surge and Sea Level Rise Effect Assessment Over Istanbul Downtown Transportation Network

Abstract

<p>It is expected that with the increased carbon emission rates around the world impact of global warming will become more severe every year. There are extreme variations in the extent of natural events, such as temperature changes, amount of precipitation, and storm strength. Today, more than 3 billion people live within 200 kilometres inland from the coastline, about half of the world's population. Considering today's cities and population distributions, ongoing research focuses on to what extent they are prepared for these climatic changes and their effects. Especially in megacities close to the shore like Istanbul, buildings, roads, and public transportation networks on the coastline can be damaged due to storm surges and sea level rise from time to time, even in short-term heavy rains. Effect of storm surges and sea level rise effect over mega cities' coastal areas having low-lying topographies have a risk of creating destructive effects. A considerable part of the population of Istanbul, the 1st in Europe and the 14th in the world, with its population approaching 16 million, lives on the shores of the Marmara and Bosphorus. It is crucial for Istanbul, a polycentric city spread over two continents, Asia, and Europe, that the transfer hubs and transportation network provide 24-hour uninterrupted service. However, some metro, tram, ferry, and bus transfer hubs and important stations are only a short distance from the coastline. For this reason, it is essential to determine the hubs and stations at risk in the transportation network, considering storm surges and sea level rise scenarios, considering the disasters experienced in the past. Therefore, the digital elevation maps with 25 meters resolution provided by Copernicus Land Monitoring Service were used to create two scenarios for storm surges and sea level rise to assess the inundation risk of Istanbul's transportation networks close to the coastline. It has been revealed that the transportation network elements located in Kadıköy, Harem and Üsküdar on the Anatolian Side and Beşiktaş, Kabataş, Karaköy and Eminönü on the European Side are at serious risk. As a result of any disaster that may occur in these regions, problems that may cause problems will occur throughout Istanbul and disrupt public transport temporarily. It is planned to prepare more detailed storm surge and sea level rise maps by using high-resolution digital elevation models based on location to define risk in more detail. This way, a practical research output can be provided for research partners and public authorities to develop policies and mitigation strategies for transportation network interruption against storm surges and sea level rise.</p>

Performance Assessment of Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 Satellite Images for the Production of Time Series Land Use/Land Cover (Lulc) Maps

“…Since the resolution of Landsat is 30 meters, it provides data with lower resolution than satellites such as Sentinel-2. Despite its limitations, Landsat is used by many researchers for different thematic studies like forest monitoring, structure mapping, vegetation health assessment, flood, and drought analysis, as it can be used for preliminary and fast assessments [9][10][11][12][13][14].…”