Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Ph.D. Researcher, Geography and Urban Planning, University of Tehran, Iran
2 Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Planning, University of Tehran, Iran
3 Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Planning, Tehran University
4 Professor of Geography and Urban Planning, University of Tehran, Iran
5 Associate Professor of Geography and Rural Planning, Faculty of Geography, University of Tehran
Abstract
Operationalizing the concept of urban disaster resilience is a major milestone toward understanding both the characteristics that contribute to the resilience of cities to natural hazards and the interactions required to build and sustain it. While the measurement of urban disaster resilience has recently gained much attention, there is so far no optimal approach for operationalizing this concept and therefore there is a need to conduct more empirical studies on what constitutes disaster resilience and how to assess it. The city of Khorramabad is prone to many risks due to exposure to surface runoff flowing from the surrounding mountains, floods, flooding of rivers that pass through the center of the city, and the inherent feature of being located in a unique valley. Researchers predict that future weather-related events will increase in frequency and intensity due to climate change.The consequences of these events, i.e. damage to infrastructure and property, as well as personal injuries and loss of life, are likely to increase. In this study, a resilience assessment focuses on the inherent characteristics and capacities of Khorramabad in the context of flash floods from surface water or from the overflow of rivers. The measurement approach is based on constructing a composite index based on six resilience dimensions social, economic, institutional, infrastructural, community capital, and environmental of community flood resilience. This follows by developing a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making method. The applied method is a combination of the DANP for prioritizing the selected indicators and the TOPSIS tools in order to get Khorramabad's urban districts ranked based on their resilience levels. Most of the data provided for the indicators are mainly obtained from the Iranian Statistics Center as the unique reference of the country's official statistics, Other required data were retrieved from publicly available information sources of Khorram Abad Municipality, Organization of Management and Prevention of Natural Disasters, Renovation and Equipping of Iranian Schools, and Ministry of Health, Treatment and Medical Education of Iran. The results clarify that District 23 is comparatively the most resilient district, while Districts 1, 4, 7, 13, and 17 are the lowest level of resilience. Such place-based assessments have an opportunity to track community performance over time and provide the tool to decision-makers in order to integrate resilience thinking into urban development and resilience-oriented urban planning.
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