Economic loss estimation for earthquake hazard in Istanbul

Natural hazards, especially earthquakes, cause disasters when they hit large settlements such as metropolitan areas. After the first shock, the damage is counted by deaths and injuries. In a while, the destroying effects of disaster appear on economic asset of the region. Direct losses including damages in buildings and lifelines can caused non-structural or indirect losses as interruption of business activities and services. Loss estimation techniques have been developed to evaluate losses from earthquakes and other natural hazards. Recently, loss estimation models have improved due to advances in information technology and have been automated using Geographic Information Systems. The aim of this paper is to find out economic effects of probable earthquake in Istanbul. In this study, damage ratios of the most probable and the worst-case earthquake scenarios have been used in order to estimate total damage cost from destruction of houses and interruption of business activities. Despite the loss estimation model does not include monetary losses in lifeline system, centers of administration, emergency services and historical assets, the findings show that future losses, caused by a severe earthquake in Marmara Sea, will exceed the total damage cost of Kocaeli earthquake in 1999.

Assessment of Seismic Risk in Istanbul

The 1999 earthquakes occurred in Turkey caused destructions in every field and level in nation wide with the high number of deaths and injuries, the remarkable rates of collapsed and heavily damaged buildings and the interruption of business activities in long-term. In the last 5 year-period, various scientific researches focusing on seismic issues have investigated the relationships among seismicity, site conditions and vulnerability. Moreover, with the co-operations of central and local governments, universities and international agencies, many comprehensive projects have been carried out, such as “A Disaster Prevention/Mitigation Basic Plan for Istanbul” by Istanbul Greater Municipality - Japan International Cooperation Agency. Despite 1999 earthquakes had slight effects on Istanbul, the probability of a great earthquake (estimated to occur up to 30 years), has accelerated the attempts on risk evaluation, development of mitigation strategies, readjustment of disaster management system and so on. The primary studies on this field are focused on understanding seismicity and site conditions at large scale so that the earthquake maps produced show risky zones related to geological indicators. Aftermath of many great disasters, it has been observed that land-use decisions, demographic and economic pattern are the key components which increase or decrease the vulnerability level of settlements. In this context, the aim of this paper is to evaluate vulnerability components affecting risk levels and to explore risky zones of Istanbul. In this paper, urban and seismic indicators (i.e. site conditions, demography, land use, economy) have been aggregated and factor analysis has been used in order to reveal principal components of earthquake risk in Istanbul. According to these main factors, using cluster analysis, the critical zones of Istanbul have been indicated on urban pattern.

Effects of innovation diffusion on the development level for some European regions in the expansion period of the European Union

It is argued that innovation diffusion, in other words the movement of the new ideas or articrafts within an area over a number of time periods could become widespread once introduced in the area. After Schumpeter the role of the innovator has been significant as the inventor, as the developer or as the promoter. It is clear now that a number of economists have one thing in common that profit rates would be pushed to minimal levels in the absence of technical development. In fact, in the new theories of development concepts related to knowledge development and its diffusion take precedence. Moreover, concerning regional disparities and regional convergence issues in the European Union, it is pointed out that R&D investment in lagging areas could be the only way to avoid technology and development divergence between core and periphery. In this connection, it might be worthwhile to consider the enlargement process of the European Union with further expansion period. In this way, the objective of this article will be to find out probable effects of R&D on the development level in a five-years period (1996-2001) in order to examine the efficiency rate of innovation diffusion on the development level and to derive some theoretical and practical results.

Urban Transformation as a tool for Disaster Mitigation

Urban transformation projects are prepared with the purpose to sanitize decayed areas, to make cities beautiful and to create economic vitality. Since natural hazards threaten large metropolitan areas, urban transformation is pronounced together to mitigate disasters. This approach of urban transformation includes land use decisions related to hazard, risk and vulnerability analysis and to enhance the implementation of building codes respecting the current standards with application of urban transformation methodologies. Ideally urban transformation methodologies include not only physical and economic improvement but also provide social improvement concerning people who live in the area. Urban transformation seems to be the government’s primary tool for disaster mitigation by guiding urban development and improving the quality of housing stock in Turkey. Several attempts since 2005 to pass a bill to institutionalize this controversial strategy finally succeeded in 2010. In June, Law No. 5998, an amendment to Municipal Law No5393 of 2005, expanded item 73 on urban transformation projects to give municipalities the power to initiate Urban Transformation projects to rehabilitate urban areas or to mitigate disaster risk. According to this item in metropolitan areas, district municipalities can implement such projects within their jurisdictions with the approval of the metropolitan municipal council. Therefore Istanbul (Turkey) which is the biggest metropolitan area and waiting a big earthquake in next 30 years will be subjected to several urban transformation projects in the near future. In the paper, the urban transformation related to disaster mitigation approach will be discussed in the case of Istanbul in terms of descriptive analysis and proposals for future development.

Methods and data considerations related to the size distribution of settlements

Since Zipf, research on rank-size distribution of settlements has generally dealt with the upper tail of the distribution. Previously Turkish rank-size distribution was examined only for the upper part by Dökmeci and others. Parr had pointed on the similarity between the log-normal distribution and the rank size distribution at the upper tail. Within this paper the whole dataset of Turkish settlements (over 36.000 units) is employed for the period 1980-2000, thus, an analysis with no threshold population is undertaken. The results reveal a lognormal distribution. Furthermore the rank-size distribution from 1927 until present is also examined using a threshold of 1.000 population. With every successive census, the convex distribution of 1927 gradually evolves into a linear distribution reaching the slope of unity at the 1990’s. For recent censuses there is a point of refraction at population size 2.000 which is the threshold population for municipal incorporation and it seems that the unnatural refraction is a sign of fraud in census caused by localities over-enumerating with the aim of municipal incorporation. Another focus is on proper delimitation of boundaries of settlements in order to eliminate the possible distortion caused by administrative boundaries irrelevant to the unity of settlements. Methods applying international standards of urban area delimitation to the Turkish context, urban-rural differentiation and proper selection of threshold figures are discussed. Also definitions of administrative units (provinces, districts) and settlement units (cities, towns, villages) are given for the Turkish legal system compared with other countries.

Eurocities and Their "Sisters": How Are They Close to Each Other?

The globalization process has led to the emergence of network of cities in which the cities have become more integrated to the new world system. ‘Eurocities’ or ‘Sister Cities’ are among the well known examples of network of cities which provide interaction and cooperation of the cities at the regional and global level. The ‘sister city movement’ can be defined as a further step of international relationships of the cities at the municipality level which is based on understanding the cultures of each other and aims to create common values. Additionally, sister city relationship provides international trade and economic development between two countries at the local level. Empirical findings show that there are 3 phases of sister city movement: i) the associative phase, ii) the reciprocative phase, and iii) the commercial phase. In this process, municipalities or local authorities have become ‘entrepreneurs’ in order to contribute to the economic and social dynamisms of cities. The present study investigates the relationships of Eurocities with their sister cities from the perspective of the development level or the degree of the relationship. Which factors are important in improving the mutual relationship? Which factors determine the development phases of the relationship? Under which conditions the mutual relationship creates business opportunities and reaches to the level of economic cooperation? What are the success measures of city-to-city affiliation? The study aims to compare and evaluate the current sister cities relationships of Eurocities on the basis of the actual performance in cultural dialogue, benchmarking and commercial activities. The data and information used for comparison and evaluation are based on extensive survey questionnaires filled out by relevant departments or experts of municipalities in Eurocities. As a rather novel methodological contribution, a recently developed artificial intelligence method, i.e. rough set analysis, is deployed to assess and identify the most important factors that are responsible for successes and failures of the relationships between sister cities.

Earthquake risk assessment for Istanbul

Deprem risk analizi; sismik tehlike ve alana ilişkin verilerin bir arada incelenerek olasılıkların ortaya konulmasıdır. Deprem riskini etkileyen faktörler; deprem tehlikesi, arazi kullanımı, demografik yapı ve ekonomik yapı başlıkları altında incelenmektedir. Bu faktörlerin kendi grup ve alt gruplarındaki karşılaştırmaları ve değerlendirilmelerinin yanı sıra, birbirleriyle olan etkileşimleri de deprem risk haritalarının hazırlanmasında önem kazanmaktadır. Çalışma alanı olarak seçilen İstanbul, tarih boyunca sayısız deprem yaşamıştır. Bunların arasında 1509, 1766 ve 1894 depremleri kent genelinde ve çevre yerleşmelerde büyük yıkımlara neden olmuştur. Bu depremlerin oluşumuna neden olan Kuzey Anadolu Fay’ının Marmara içinden geçen kollarının önümüzdeki yıllar içinde yine kırılarak büyük bir deprem oluşturması beklenmektedir. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Türkiye’nin nüfus açısından en büyük şehri olan ve aynı zamanda Kuzey Anadolu Fay hattının batı kanadına yakınlığı nedeniyle deprem tehdidi altında bulunan İstanbul’un yapılaşmış, demografik ve ekonomik çevre değişkenleri ile mevcut potansiyelleri kapsamında deprem riski açısından değerlendirilmesidir. İstanbul’da depreme bağlı risk düzeylerinin hesaplanmasında kullanılan ana bileşenler analizi yöntemiyle belirlenen 5 temel faktörden arazi kullanımına ilişkin olan faktörlerin deprem tehlikesi değişkeninden daha yüksek değerler alması, risk değerlendirmede yerleşmelerin tehlikeye açıklık seviyelerinin ne kadar belirleyici olduğunun bir göstergesidir. Deprem tehlikesinin büyüklüğünün yanı sıra, İstanbul’un gelişmesindeki plansızlık deprem riskinin artmasında en büyük rolü oynamaktadır.  Anahtar Kelimeler: Deprem, hasar görebilirlik, risk analizi, İstanbul. Seismic risk analysis can be described as the exploration of seismic hazard and data reflecting the current feature of the site in order to reveal all the probabilities which will trace the level of impact. In general terms, risk is the combination of probability of occurrence and the consequence of a specified hazardous event. In the other words, the value of risk depends on the severity of hazard and the vulnerability of the elements which will be affected by the hazardous event. Vulnerability can be described as inherent characteristics of a system that create the potential for harm but are independent of the probabilistic risk of the occurrence (event risk) of any particular hazard or extreme event. Vulnerability in urban areas can be investigated according to environmental, physical, socio-demographic and economic structures of settlements. Istanbul faced several earthquakes such as it had experienced in 1509, 1799 and 1894. According to the recent scientific researches, in the next 30 year period, another major earthquake will likely occur and will cause vast damages in Istanbul .To examine the earthquake risk in Istanbul, 15 variables are used which represent hazard and urban exposure for 613 neighborhood of Istanbul Metropolitan Area. The methodology of the empirical part of this study is based on principle component analysis which provides to evaluate risk variables through the main factors. Firstly, in order to calculate the earthquake risk of the city, the information on earthquake hazard was compiled according to the previous study developed by Japan International Cooperation Agency and Istanbul Greater Municipality in 2002. The hazard data referred from the earthquake scenario with the MW=7.7 of JICA and IBB project. Moreover, the areas with a slope more than %30 were also included into the database. Since earthquakes can trigger secondary hazards such as urban fires and explosions, hazardous land uses were also men-tioned. Land use pattern and building density have been used in order to reveal the general built-up   structure of the city and to forecast the probable difficulties in search and rescue operations after-math of the earthquake. In the demographic indicators, population density and vulnerable population rate according to the age groups have been presented as well. Furthermore, the number of students attending the neighborhood?s schools is defined as vulnerable population. Beside earthquakes give damages to built-up environment; they can affect economic structure in long term period in region and nation wide. Therefore, fiscal indicators are integrated to the database as they embody the likelihood of future economic losses by earthquakes. The potentials comprehend all kind of elements which are able to reduce the negative effects of earthquake. Especially, open spaces and health care facilities are vital to prevent the increase of further losses rising in the short term period aftermath of the earthquakes. Originally, 27 variables were collected, but after testing for multi-collinearity among the variables, 15 independent variables were used in the statistical analyses to calculate earthquake risk levels in Istanbul. These 15 independent variables form 5 main factors using the principal component analysis such as: (Factor 1) vulnerability, (Factor 2) density, (Factor 3) work places and hazardous land uses, (Factor 4) hazard and (Factor 5) potentials.        The 5 main components sort according to their explanation percentage of the total variance. The total variance presents the earthquake risk level in this study. The vulnerability component which explains about 18,9% of the total variance, is also the most explanatory factor among the others. In the other words, while describing earthquake risk level in Istanbul, the major indicators are highly related with the exposure and the vulnerability levels of the city.  As far as Factor 2 and Factor 3 are also associated with the built-up area of the city, so that the general conditions of urban pattern explain about 47,1% of earthquake risk. In the principal component analysis, the forth factor which refers earthquake hazards explains just 10,8% of the total variance of earthquake risk level. Keywords: Earthquake, vulnerability, risk analysis, Istanbul

The role of “network of cities” in construction of global urban culture

The globalization process has led to an increased interaction between cities and to a new urban system/network in which they need to be competitive and complementary at the same time. “Network of cities”, such as World Cities, Eurocities or Sister Cities are among the well known examples of interaction and cooperation of the cities at the regional and global level. The cities of different regions and countries tend to share their experiences and their cultures within these networks in order to develop some common spatial or social strategies and further cooperation. “Best practices” or “benchmarking are the most important issues of the interaction between cities. While benchmarking facilitates the cultural dialogue between different cities, the common values developed in this process make a great contribution to the construction of global urban culture. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the role of urban networks in the interaction and integration of cities by means of “Sister City” movement that can be defined as a partnership of two cities from different countries which is based on cultural and social understanding to achieve cultural dialogue. This paper focuses on the “Sister Cities of Instanbul” to highlight the development process of the movement in the historical and geographical context and to evaluate the development phases of the relationship with sister cities. The results of our study show that Istanbul’s relationships with its sister cities are at the “associative” and “reciprocative” phases that can be defied as the earlier phases of the relationships.