Analysis of turkey's disaster management system in terms of engineering: the case of Antakya- Defne (Hatay)

The earthquakes of February 6, 2023, with epicenters in Pazarcık (Kahramanmaraş), resulted in severe loss of life and property across a vast region, most notably in Hatay province. These events have underscored the urgent need to reassess Türkiye's disaster risk management strategies. In this context, the multi-criteria structure influencing the conversion of large-magnitude seismic events into disasters in urban areas was investigated through a holistic and interdisciplinary framework. The objective is to provide a scientific contribution to disaster risk management by analyzing the spatial distribution of earthquake-induced damage under two main dimensions: environmental and social factors. Earthquake-risk criteria were weighted using the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), and the relative risk levels of selected neighborhoods were ranked using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). A total of 17 environmental and social sub-criteria were evaluated for Hatay province within a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) framework. The findings reveal that Peak Ground Acceleration (PGA) is the most influential environmental factor, with several areas exhibiting critical risk levels. Among social factors, population density emerged as the dominant criterion. The integrated AHP–TOPSIS model successfully delineated local risk levels, identifying the Odabashi neighborhood as having the highest Ci value and belonging to the highest-risk category. These results underscore the need for adopting interdisciplinary and multidimensional analytical approaches in disaster-risk assessment. In conclusion, this doctoral thesis provides practical recommendations for enhancing disaster management policies from a geoscientific perspective. The framework developed provides a locally sensitive, expert-informed, pre-event risk-prioritization model that can enhance preparedness and lessen the potential impacts of future seismic events.