Introduction

City officials need tools to understand the priorities and to set up benchmarks and track progress in their disaster management systems, so that they can justify decisions and investments in disaster risk reduction. The models and methodology referred to here as the “Megacity Indicator System” (MIS) is a tool to communicate risk and promote discussion around relevant local‐level risk parameters that enable DRM professionals and decision‐makers to develop appropriate Disaster Risk Management (DRM) strategies. It also sets up benchmarks and enables tracking progress on these benchmarks, thus providing a possibility to correct, review and decide on where to invest resources. In this work the main focus is on development of megacity-relevant indicators, application of the methodology and indicators in an interactive tool, and building a reproducible framework which cities and other institutions can use to measure their own DRM state-of-practice and evaluate progress in urban DRR.

 Approach

The Megacity Indicators System (MIS) is composed of three separate but complimentary indicator sets. The first component of the MIS is the Urban Seismic Risk Index (USRi) which is based on the work of Cardona et al. (2005), and provides an overview of not only the expected direct damages, but also the potential for aggravating impact of the direct damages by the social fragility and lack of resilience of different districts in Istanbul. Evaluation of the potential direct damage of expected physical damage to buildings and infrastructure from existing loss scenarios produces the “physical” risk indicators as the first step of this method. The potential direct impact of an earthquake, for example, is denoted as Physical Risk, R_F. The indirect effects are given by and impact factor (1+F), which is based on an aggravating coefficient, F. The impact factor (F) consists of a set of indicators describing inherent factors of fragility of a person or group (i.e. personal attributes, living situations, finances) as well as  factors of resilience, such as available means of disaster preparedness and risk mitigation, solidarity and social networks, savings and other buffers and resources for reconstruction and recovery. Thus the total Urban Seismic Risk Index (USRi) at the level of the municipality (m) is given by the following expression:

The indicators in the Istanbul implementation for social vulnerability were derived through an iterative process with a local group of investigators and reviewed in several workshops with experts at the Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute (KOERI) and at the Middle Eastern Technical University (METU) in Ankara, Turkey. Some of social vulnerability indicators come from census surveys and routinely gathered data. However, a second group are typically not subjects of data collection, yet they represent the critical facets of resilience or capacity which are required to overcome vulnerability. This data comes primarily from a 30-point social structure survey designed as part of this research and is due to be conducted in early 2010 by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality of 35,000 households in Istanbul. This survey is further augmented by several other sources, which include the Transportation Planning Department, Health Ministry, KOERI Disaster Preparedness Education Program (AHEP), Civil Defense and a number of NGOs.

 A final step in the MIS approach is to capture the potential for disaster risk management through a set of descriptive performance indicators and track progress (or lack of progress) on pre-defined benchmarks of corrective and prospective intervention. This resulted into the development of the Disaster Risk Management Index (DRMi), which like the CCi is developed to address the mandates of policy- and decision makers at the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and its institutions. The DRMi performance indicators enable tracking progress of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality on benchmarks and strategic outcomes derived from the 2002 Istanbul Earthquake Master Plan, the recommendations of the Earthquake Council Report in 2004 and the Strategic Vision of IMM on disaster risk reduction for 2007-2014. The DRMi have been developed into a handbook for the Municipality and will be scored in a future workshop with key stakeholders at the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality to obtain performance evaluations along key functional activities. The project implementation group has worked in close collaboration with contributors from AKOM (the Municipality’s disaster management facility) to develop the structure and handbook of the DRMi indicators which has so far been validated in two internal workshops. 

 Project Status

In the MIS implementation of Istanbul, to date, all physical risk indicators and all available social vulnerability (impact factor) indicators at the district level have been implemented in a multi-criteria software tool to obtain total urban risk rankings in the districts of Istanbul. The implementation process consists of organizing and working with a key group of stakeholders at the Municipality in evaluating the indicators and discussing the outcomes of the MIS. The MIS application in Istanbul will rely or pre‐defining the importance weights and scores of the DRM indicators with a group of experts. This allows the workshop with the stakeholders to focus on communication of the results, and translating them into specific policy recommendations. The weights and transformation functions of the indicators have been evaluated and indicators were qualified by examining the effects of their weights upon the total output. Figure 2 show the impact factor and the physical risk rankings in the district for the Urban Seismic Risk Index (USRi). A one‐day workshop planned for 2010 will be used to evaluate the USRi and CCi indicators and generate scores for the DRMi indicators with target group of stakeholders from the Metropolitan Municipality. The MIS tool allows for the interactive implementation of several weighting methodologies, and will allow the participants to look at the sensitivity of different weighting schemes in real time. Currently additional data is being collected for completing the Coping Capacity Index. Further methodological work is also necessary in estimating the demand-side of operations such as restoring lifeline services given the available data and resources. Furthermore, results of the social structure survey are still pending, which have to be compiled for a final valuation of the USRi.

 Partners

 The project is a joint scientific activity between CEDIM, Earthquake and Megacities Initiative (EMI), Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) and Bogazici University’s Center for Disaster Management (CEDNIM). The project is undertaken within the Directorate of Ground and Earthquake Research of the IMM. The project is undertaken within the Directorate of Earthquake and Ground Analysis of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

Dr. Bijan Khazai, Geophysical Institute, Karlsruhe Univeristy

Mr. Osman Kılıç, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

Mr. Ahmet Emre Basmacı, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

Mr. Emin Menteşe, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

Ms. Betül Konukcu, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

Ms. Bilgen Sungay, Center for Disaster Management (CENDIM), Bogazici University

 Project Advisors

Prof. Mustafa Erdik, Department of Earthquake Engineering, Boğaziçi University

Prof. Eser Durukal, Center for Disaster Management (CENDIM), Boğaziçi University

Prof. Metin İlkışık, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

Mr. Mahmut Baş, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality

Prof. Friedemann Wenzel, Geophysical Institute, Karlsruhe University

Dr. Fouad Bendimerad, Earthquake and Megacities Initiative