Himmet Karaman

Overview and applications of Maeviz-Hazturk 2007

A new generation of tools is needed to allow researchers and practicing engineers the ability to leverage investments in new methodologies and software infrastructure while enabling customization to local conditions. MAEviz represents such a next generation of seismic risk assessment software, based on the Mid-America Earthquake (MAE) Center research in Consequence-based Risk Management (CRM) and is designed to be extended, customized, and evolved to meet the needs of specific organizations and regions. MAEviz helps bridge the gap between researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers by integrating the latest research findings and most accurate data, using state-of-the-art methodologies, in an extensible software platform.

Loss Assessment Study for the Zeytinburnu District of Istanbul Using Maeviz-Istanbul (HAZTURK)

The two important earthquakes that occurred in Turkey in 1999 have increased concerns on what would happen if a major earthquake affects Istanbul again. Alarming estimates reveal that Istanbul will probably be exposed to a devastating earthquake, with a magnitude between 6.5 and 7.7, in the next 25–30 years. The necessity of comprehensive plans for seismic mitigation, and response and recovery tasks after catastrophic events, has encouraged researchers to develop scientifically advanced tools to conduct loss assessment analyses. After the 1999 earthquakes hit Kocaeli and Düzce, several seismic loss assessment studies were performed for the city of Istanbul; many of them were carried out by the most important academicians in Turkey. However, due to the rapid changes in the exposed inventory of the city, those studies were losing accuracy. This article presents a seismic loss assessment system that can easily reanalyze earthquake scenarios including updates in the exposed inventory. This software can be used by government decision makers and disaster management agencies. In the analysis described in this article, the inventory data for the Zeytinburnu District is updated and visualized by using the rapid visual screening of buildings. Results from a loss assessment for the Zeytinburnu District are presented and compared with results from previous studies. The loss assessment analysis provide estimates of building damage, retrofit cost, economic loss, fiscal impact, and cost-benefit analysis.

Earthquake Loss Assessment Features of Maeviz-Istanbul (Hazturk)

The development of a general purpose disaster impact assessment software package is a daunting task, complicated by a number of technical, political, and administrative challenges. For example, geospatial information management should account for the administrative system of the country subject to the assessment, while the hazard, fragility, and inventory each have features that require implementation and display decisions that are consistent with the region. To accommodate the requirement of Istanbul, as possibly the largest megacity in the world with an acute earthquake risk problem, a new software package was developed, based on the Mid-America Earthquake Center platform MAEviz. MAEviz-Istanbul, the first stage of HAZTURK, is described in this article with emphasis on the regional significance and consistency of the development from an earthquake engineering viewpoint. Sample analyses are also provided at the end of the article to demonstrate the potential use of such a tool in assessing the impact of earthquakes on a densely populated cosmopolitan region.

Net earthquake hazard and elements at risk (NEaR) map creation for city of Istanbul via spatial multi-criteria decision analysis

The creation of earthquake hazard maps requires various datasets with selected attenuation relations. Based on the selected attenuation relation, the calculation time varies from half an hour to a couple of days. The length of time needed to create an earthquake hazard map also depends on the resolution of the resulting map. The time gets longer as the resolution of the resulting earthquake hazard map gets higher. The basic form of an attenuation relation requires complex calculation algorithms including geospatial information related to the region of interest. Nowadays, next-generation attenuation (NGA) models are introduced to generate more realistic earthquake hazard maps. However, the more complex the attenuation relation is, the longer time will be required to create a hazard map. This paper offers a new method to create high-resolution earthquake hazard maps, faster than using traditional attenuation relation methods, by using an analytic hierarchy process of spatial multi-criteria decision analysis and geographic information systems. This method has been generated and tested for the city of Istanbul. The resulting maps are compared with the earthquake hazard maps created for the city of Istanbul by using the NGA model of Boore and Atkinson (in Boore–Atkinson NGA ground motion relations for the geometric mean horizontal component of peak and spectral ground motion parameters (trans: Engineering Co, University of California B). Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center 2007). A second output of this paper is a map of the elements at risk (EaR) for the population and buildings of Istanbul, and the introduction of a new approach of net elements at risk (NEaR).

GPS Measurements along the North Anatolian Fault Zone on the Mid-Anatolia Segment

The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is one of the longest active strike slip systems. Slip rate of the NAF was estimated from the GPS data as 20–24mm/yr approximately from previous studies. One of the important features of the NAF is seen in the central part. Here NAF consists of southward splitting concave branches. These splines generally have right-lateral slip and can be compared with Riedel fractures. The important splays are Sungurlu, Merzifon and Lacin faults. A new project “Determination of Kinematics along the North Anatolian Fault Branch between Ladik and Ilgaz with GPS Measurements”, founded by The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) and Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Research Fund has been carried out in order to determine the magnitude and direction of the block movements in the region by using GPS since 2001. The knowledge about the neotectonics of the region with the contributions of geology and seismology after the GPS campaigns is expected to provide further information on the assessment of the earthquake potential.

Monitoring of Deformations Along Fethiye-Burdur Fault Zone (Turkey) with GPS

Afyonkarahisar, Burdur and Fethiye region, southwest of Turkey is located on a tectonically active area. According to the historical recordings, the region was destructed by earthquakes many times. Since the beginning of the 20th century, more than 35 earthquakes with magnitudes bigger than 4 occurred in Afyonkarahisar region. Seven earthquakes recorded over the last 90 years in the region between Burdur and Fethiye whose magnitudes are between 5.0 and 7.0. This new project “Monitoring of Deformations Along Fethiye-Burdur Fault Zone With GPS”, is founded by The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Karadeniz Technical University (KTU) and Afyon Kocatepe University (AKU). The aim of the project is to determine strain accumulation of the study area.

Integration of GIS, AHP and TOPSIS for earthquake hazard analysis

Worldwide, earthquakes and related disasters have persistently had severe negative impacts on human livelihoods and have caused widespread socioeconomic and environmental damage. The severity of these disasters has prompted recognition of the need for comprehensive and effective disaster and emergency management (DEM) efforts, which are required to plan, respond to and develop risk mitigation strategies. In this regard, recently developed methods, known as multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), have been widely used in DEM domains by emergency managers to greatly improve the quality of the decision-making process, making it more participatory, explicit, rational and efficient. In this study, MCDA techniques of the Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), integrated with GIS, were used to produce earthquake hazard and risk maps for earthquake disaster monitoring and analysis for a case study region of Küçükçekmece in Istanbul, Turkey. The five main criteria that have the strongest influence on the impact of earthquakes on the study region were determined: topography, distance to epicentre, soil classification, liquefaction and fault/focal mechanism. AHP was used to determine the weights of these parameters, which were also used as input into the TOPSIS method and GIS (ESRI ArcGIS) for simulating these outputs to produce earthquake hazard maps. The resulting earthquake hazard maps created by both the AHP and TOPSIS models were compared, showing high correlation and compatibility. To estimate the elements at risk, population and building data were used with the AHP and TOPSIS hazard maps for potential loss assessment; thus, we demonstrated the potential of integrating GIS with AHP and TOPSIS in generating hazard maps for effective earthquake disaster and risk management.

Determination of building age for Istanbul buildings to be used for the earthquake damage analysis according to structural codes by using aerial and satellite images in GIS

Istanbul is located in one of the most active seismic zones in the world. Since Istanbul is the industrial, commercial, cultural and educational center of Turkey, it attracts ongoing migration from all over Turkey. However, those migrations caused unplanned construction and those unplanned constructions led to the formation of vulnerable and undocumented building stock in Istanbul. Many scientific studies estimated that Istanbul is expecting a major earthquake and the expected damage to the structures will be extensive. Therefore, there have been a lot of building damage estimations for the possible Istanbul earthquake to recommended precautions and to be prepared. A major disadvantage of Istanbul case is the lack of knowledge for the absolute number of buildings and the ages of those buildings. Up to now, many studies for Istanbul used the building dataset of Istanbul with the number starting from 1.1 to 1.5 million without the absolute age information. To make a correct or reliable earthquake damage estimation, a building database that contains at least building age, construction type and number of floors is required in most of the earthquake loss assessment software. This paper aims to determine the buildings of Istanbul and the age of them, according to structural codes for the earthquake zones by using aerial and satellite images of Istanbul. The classification should be based on the regulation so as to minimize the age classes and maximize the accuracy. First building regulations in Turkey came into force in 1940 in order to determine essential conditions for the realization of functional, safe and disaster-resistant building design in Turkey. Last updated building code regulations have come into force in 2007 in Turkey. It was also important to investigate the proper building detection method for the aim of this study, and it was determined as the manual digitization. In this study, the buildings of Istanbul and the age of them are determined for every single building, by digitizing the selected aerial and satellite images of Istanbul based on the official structural codes in Turkey. Thus, first the exact number and location of buildings in Istanbul and every single buildings age were determined. The results were also validated with two separate studies of Istanbul for different periods of times. By this way, earthquake damage analysis for the Istanbul buildings can be run for the real building data of Istanbul with any earthquake loss assessment software.

Step by Step Constitution of an Emergency Management Based Object Model and Database System on Linux for the I.T.U. Campus D.I.S.

To mitigate the property and life losses at the I.T.U. Ayazaga Campus, after a probable disaster that may occur in Istanbul, it is strongly necessary to constitute an emergency management based object model and database in order to apply the Turkey Disaster Information System (TABIS) which was developed within the scope of “Constitution of the National RSS-GIS Based Database and Emergency Management Focused Decision Support System Project”.