Development of damage reduction strategies in urban disaster risk

Numerous declarations have been published and aggreements have been made about Disaster Management on an international level since 1990. Especially after the determination of ten years between 1990 and 2000 as ?International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction? by United Nations have provided development of a new appproach on the subject of disaster management. According to this new understanding; priority in disaster management should be preventive measures and risk management besides emergency management, this is a prerequiste for the sustainable development and a global program in this direction need to be developed.This approach developing in the international level has found reflections in Turkey in recent years and numerous research reports, prepared for due diligence and routing, especially both earthquakes and concerning urban risks, were included risk reduction and necessary measures before disasters. However, these studies could not be transferred to the application and did not referred to the development of plan implementation decisions. The reason for this, in Turkey in terms of disasters, not to configure a modern `disaster and risk management system? that give priority to the `risk management? of reducing disaster damages before disasters besides `emergency management? including studies after the disaster in the disaster management system.The disaster risk prevention and damage reduction operations in the residental areas can not gain operability unless a contemporary disaster and risk management structure be created and necessary mechanisms be established in order to transfer reducing disaster risks strategies to application in our country, argument comprises the main hypotheses of the thesis. To verify the hypothesis of the thesis, on the one hand organizational structures of case countries have been compared with our country, on the other hand plans to reduce disaster damages made by local governments in Turkey were evaluated.