An analysis of urban risks on the base of spatial planning and resilient urban planning approach

In recent years, new approaches regarding vulnerability and resilience have become widespread in the literature of disasters policy, rather than focusing solely on the hazards. There is a gap between urban planning and urban risks and planning is being handled independent from the risk component. This study aims to integrate planning with risk components, to underline the significance of the urban planning in this process and to develop approaches that can be adopted to reach the objective of 'resilient urban settlements'. Within the scope of the thesis, weights of indicators are created by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method by the assessments of the experts in the disasters and planning field. Therefore, an index is defined which describes the main components of urban resilience as hazard, vulnerability, risk reduction capacity, emergency response and recovery capacity. Risk reduction capacity is determined as the key factor for resilient cities in the study. Covering the pre-disaster policies with its sub-factors and indicators, 'risk reduction capacity' focuses on organization, coordination, preparation, budget and income, management and participation phases. According to results of this study, 'mitigation planning' is the significant factor among other risk reduction capacity indicators for resilient cities. The importance of mitigation planning underlines that planning should take part in disaster studies as a coordinating actor since it contains the inclusive and holistic perspective. Furthermore, 'the necessity of adopting resilience approaches in location of social facilities' ranks second, while 'risk communication' comes in third. These results, manifested as part of the study, are found to match up with 'pre-disaster capacity expansion', which is one of the dwelled-upon matters in the international disaster policy. Based on the results, planning and implementation strategies are developed at legal-administrative, physical-environmental, socio-economic levels, within the scope of the policies to reach resilient cities.