Examination of social and spatial resilience to disasters: The case study of Duzce

The destruction of nature and natural resources has resulted from the gradual expansion in human population and the demand for additional settlements and related human activities. These factors, when combined with potential risks put pressure on nature, resulting in events that led to disasters. The effects of these events are increasingly felt, and the damage they cause has brought. The effects of these events are increasingly felt, and the damage they cause has brought a series of studies to the forefront. As a result of the disasters that occurred, the Hyogo Framework for Action, adopted in 2005, highlighted the concept of resilience in disaster management. Later, in 2015, it was decided to further enhance and advance resilience studies with the Sendai Disaster Risk Reduction Framework Action Plan. The aim of this study is to contribute to disaster resilience studies at the local level and to examine, measure, and evaluate resilience in a city that has experienced a disaster. The study area has been determined as the 56 central neighborhoods of Düzce Province, which have experienced various disasters in the past and continue to face them. This area has been divided into two parts: the neighborhoods before and after the 1999 earthquake, and their resilience levels have been evaluated in relation to each other. In the measurement and evaluation study, the Basic Resilience Indicators for Commuities (BRIC), an indicator set that examines a geographical area at any scale, was used. Four dimensions (ecological, social, economic, spatial infrastructure) adapted to this area were selected, along with 16 indicators within these dimensions. The dimensions and indicators were weighted by evaluating expert surveys, employing the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and considering expert opinions. First, the obtained data was used to analyze the indicators, which were then categorized spatially as high, medium, and low. Overlay analysis was used to produce dimension maps by multiplying indicators by their coefficients. The dimensions were also used to create the overall resilience synthesis map using the same method. As a result, in terms, the places that were neighborhoods before the 1999 earthquake were found to have lower resilience than the places that were neighborhoods after the 1999 earthquake. In terms of dimensions, places that were neighborhoods before the 1999 earthquake were strong in terms of economic resilience, while they were weak in terms of ecological, social and spatial infrastructure. This study has shown that the experiences learned from the disaster make the newly created neighborhoods stronger. However, there is a need for disaster-oriented measures to be taken and implemented by the actors in the administration in terms of ecological, social and spatial infrastructure resilience in places that have experienced and been damaged by the disaster.