Page 307 - Çevre Şehir İklim İngilizce - Sayı 4

Mahmut Bilgehan

Introduction

Cities are seen as more attractive areas by most of the country’s population
due to the wide opportunities they offer. Today, the opportunities and
facilities offered by cities lead people to live in there instead of rural areas;
as a natural consequence the dangers and risks in urban life are shared by
more and more people every day. Since Türkiye is located on a geography
that accommodates potential natural hazards such as earthquake, flood,
landslide etc. that may cause disasters, many of our cities carry risks at various
levels that may arise from these hazard potential. The recent 6 February 2023
Kahramanmaraş earthquakes have shown the fact that the greatest risk for
Türkiye is earthquakes.
It will be possible to reduce the negative effects of the dangers and risks
that occur in our cities by carefully applying risk management factors to the
structuring of cities. At this very point, the importance of disaster-resilient
planning approach emerges. Unless the decisions and measures for urban
risks are taken before disasters, the risks and vulnerability to disasters would
increase on all structures such as the buildings that form the settlements,
communal areas as green spaces, schools, hospitals, police stations, mosques
as well as industrial and other work areas, natural gas lines, roads etc. One of
the factors that increase the vulnerability to damage is irregular, unplanned and
dense structuring, especially on geologically inappropriate areas. Therefore,
it is significant to address the strategies and policies related to planning and
structuring in the scope of “disaster-resilient structuring and urban planning”
(Türkoğlu, 2014).
Many earthquakes have occurred in Türkiye, which is located in the active
seismic belt, and a large number of lives have been lost in these earthquakes.
After these natural disasters, which have left deep traces in Türkiye, the
reliability of the existing building stock has become a subject of discussion and
has become one of the important items on the agenda of Türkiye. Reviews,
researches and findings related to the existing building stock have been
published in various periods and it is aimed to increase the level of knowledge
about the subject. With the findings obtained from the studies, the seriousness
of the current situation has entailed to take various measures. In this context,
it has become necessary to determine the behaviours of buildings during a
possible earthquake and this issue has been addressed for the first time in
the Regulation on Buildings to be Constructed in Earthquake Prone Areas
(DBYBHY) published in 2007 (DBYBHY, 2007). Since DBYBHY is costly and
takes too much time to identify and assess the high risk buildings, Law No.
6306 on the Transformation of Areas under Disaster Risk entered into force in
2012 and the rules to be applied during the detection of these buildings were

296 The Journal of Environment, Urban and Climate