Read more
To a large extent, natural phenomenon like earthquakes, floods, landslides and etc may seem "natural events" which are out of human control. In fact, the sociopolitical structure is the main cause of earth tremors which turn into disasters. What is notable and striking is that, because of institutional and social vulnerabilities and little or misguided efforts for disaster loss mitigation, natural events may turn into disasters resulting negative and devastating consequences. Institutional vulnerabilities connote a lack of local administrations' capacity for disaster mitigation planning, furthermore awareness for accreting local stakeholders for disaster loss reduction. Social vulnerabilities, refers to miss-knowledge and lack of awareness for disasters in the society. In Turkey, it is hard to say that there has never been efforts for disaster loss reduction, whereas; the main focus of the state agencies has been on post-disaster emergency relief, literally wound healing for decades. Generally speaking, localities which experience a disaster may encounter significant losses in development, hence a significant decrease in local capacities which takes enormous resources to restore.
About the author
ERSAN KOÇ: (Assist.Prof.Dr.) Kocaeli Üniversity, Faculty of Architecture and Design, Fields of Interest: Urban Planning, Urban Design, Planning for Natural Disasters, Theory of the Socio-Spatial, PhD: METU (Ankara-Turkey) Grad.Sch. of Nat.App.Sci., DCRP 2010: ¿Commitment Building for Earthquake Risk Management"
