İklim değişikliği ve kentsel dayanıklılık: İstanbul için kırılganlık ve risk değerlendirmesi

Climate is changing and human activities are accelerating the natural changes in the climate. It has been already observed and projected that these changes will have significant impacts on ecosystems, physical systems and linked human activities. The urban areas especially metropolitan cities will experience several adverse impacts from climate change over the coming decades such as temperature increases, drought, and flood events. Since the number of people living in cities has passed 50 per cent, cities have become the most crucial part of the challenge of adapting to climate change in developing world. Metropolitan cities as engines of the urbanization and economic development are under risk due to adverse impacts of climate change. Determining the adapting strategies, risk level, vulnerability level and vulnerable areas in a city are the critical parts that should be concerned. The idea of managing vulnerabilities and risks forms after the determination of vulnerabilities and risks, which generates the first step of a long-term study. Unless cities have a clear understanding of the vulnerability and risk to climate change, the measures may be meaningless and ineffective. Therefore, assessing vulnerability and risk of cities to climate change becomes an important issue for developing resilience and adaptation strategies. This study aims to investigate climate change related vulnerabilities and risks on vital sectors in Istanbul urban system as the largest metropolitan city of Turkey. The vital sectors have been defined as the resource, ecological system, species, management area, activity, or other area of interest that may be affected by climate change and critical to health of citizens and the economic viability of the city. Based on Istanbul's regional development strategies in Istanbul Development Plan prepared by Istanbul Development Agency, 11 sectors; health, water resources, energy, transportation, agriculture, public safety, land use and development, materials, infrastructure, ecology and biodiversity and culture and 25 planning areas in those sectors have been determined to analyze. The vulnerability assessment and risk assessment on those sectors has been applied considering the ICLEI publication "Preparing for Climate Change; A Guidebook for Local, Regional and State Governments". Obtained data has been used to rank sectors from the most to the least vulnerability and at-risk. The results of this study highlight which sectors are the most vulnerable and under the greatest risk due to climate change. According to the results of the study the most vulnerable and at-risk sectors in Istanbul are public safety, health, ecology and biodiversity, water resources and infrastructure. The least vulnerable and at risk sector is materials. Determining the vulnerability and risk of climate change on sectors will help decision makers to develop adaptation, mitigation strategies and resilience for further studies.