Prioritization of hazard profile for Istanbul using Analytical Hierarchy Process

The compilation of the data for past disasters is vital for taking lessons from the past, investigating their reasons, preventing the loss in the future and for disaster planning-related works. In Turkey, especially in Istanbul which has a historical background of more than 8000 years, the demand for backdated disaster data increases to determine the dangers that the city is faced with and to analyze them. The purpose of our work is to develop a hazard profile identification model for Istanbul by using “Analytic Hierarchy Process.” Therefore, we searched for different types of disasters and hazard classifications in various national and international databases. We scrutinized the kinds of disasters, hazards and hazard characteristics that should be used for a proposed model. By examining “Istanbul’s 2000 Years of Disaster Database” and 100 years of Republic’s statistics prepared for Istanbul, we identified the disaster categories and criteria, ran the Analytic Hierarchy Process and created a hazard profile model for Istanbul. Consequently, we proved that the most important types of disasters that affect Istanbul are geophysical disasters followed by climatological, hydrological, meteorological and technological disasters. The work also shows us that the districts which have a high rate of the population such as Bagcilar, Kucukcekmece and Esenyurt are more vulnerable to these hazards.