Muhammed Şahin

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.

Map Entropy Analysis of Topographic Data Used in Disaster Information Systems

Disaster Information Systems has been an important research and application area in Turkey following the Kocaeli Earthquake in 1999 and the other ensuing natural disasters. In 2002, a project called “TABIS (Türkiye Afet Bilgi Sistemi – Turkish Disaster Information System)” was initiated by Istanbul Technical University (ITU) to meet the requirements of the Ministry of the Interior of Turkey. The goal of this project was to develop the standards of a Geographical Information System (GIS)—based information system which could then be used for emergency planning and administration, disaster information and loss estimation, and as a decision support system for central and local authorities (ministries and local administrative units) at other times. The project named “ISTABIS (Istanbul Afet Yönetim Bilgi Sistemi – Istanbul Disaster Management Information System)” is an application of the standards of the TABIS project for a city. This system is a GIS-based information system and includes the basic standards disseminated in the TABIS project. Analyzing the intensity of topographic objects in a disaster information system is a considerable factor in gathering data during the installation progress and defining the optimal data. Optimal data is defined as the minimum necessary data for the aim and usage of the system which does not cause complexity on the screen. Thus, data excess and time-wasting are prevented by gathering optimal data in disaster information systems. Entropy Theorem is used for measuring the statistical information. Although entropy is the second law of thermodynamics, it was introduced in the quantification of information. In this study, an evaluation of the ISTABIS object catalogue and map data is processed. The amount of statistical information content of the object catalog and topographic maps of the ISTABIS project are measured using entropy and the results are investigated for determining the optimal data.

Guest Editor Foreword

Two devastating earthquakes, with magnitudes 7.4 and 7.2, hit Turkey on 17 August and 12 November 1999, respectively. The epicenters of the earthquakes were near Golcuk and Duzce, which are located at distances of 110 and 150 km, respectively, from Istanbul. The August 17 earthquake was a catastrophe causing severe effects in most Turkey. It affected 10 cities including Istanbul and caused more than 15,000 deaths. The population affected by the two earthquakes was approximately 20 million, which amounted to one third of the entire population of the country in 1999, and severely impacted nearly half of the Turkish economic infrastructure which was located in this region. There is still a high probability of occurrence of an earthquake having a magnitude between 6.5 and 7.7 in the next 25 to 30 years, which is expected to affect Istanbul and surrounding regions. The above-mentioned events and those that occurred within the last century have demonstrated the vulnerability of Turkish infrastructure to severe ground shaking, and the need for assessment, mitigation and high level planning. To produce mitigation strategies and to address the need for improved disaster planning and response, HAZTURK was launched in the beginning of 2005. Following the first meeting, ‘‘1 International Workshop on An Earthquake Loss Estimation Program for Turkey,’’ which was held in Istanbul on December 1 and 2 2005, Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Surveying Techniques Division and Mid-America Earthquake (MAE) Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) agreed to cooperate on the development of an earthquake loss estimation tool for Istanbul. The second meeting, ‘‘International Symposium on Earthquake Loss Estimation for Turkey,’’ was organized in Istanbul between 24 and 26 of September 2007, in order to evaluate the results obtained from the research studies carried out through the ITU and MAE Center cooperation. In the symposium, 61 papers were presented from several institutions around the world under the following sessions headings:

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”.