A Research on Increasing the Possibility of Using Green Areas as Post-Disaster Assembly Areas in Turkey

Abstract

Natural disasters, which seriously threat human lives and settlements, take place quite frequently in Turkey due to the country’s geographical and physical characteristics. Since natural disasters are not preventable phenomena, the establishment and management of a proper relation between the disasters and planning processes is a highly important requirement in terms of minimizing the possible damages that may occur. In this sense, it is necessary to determine the measures to reduce the risks of disaster exposure, and to make plan and design decisions accordingly. However, disaster preparedness is not just limited to that. Preparedness for post-disaster crisis management and determination of the locations that are suitable for post-disaster assembly areas is of great significance. From this point, green areas play an important role in the post-disaster period, as providing proper locations to be used as assembly areas. Especially, after the 1999 Gölcük and 2011 Van earthquakes in Turkey, the necessity of planning and using green and open spaces as post-disaster assembly locations has been a matter of interest. The approach of planning and designing green areas as evacuation and assembly spaces provides significant opportunities to establish safe and healthy temporary residence areas for the people suffering from the consequences of the disasters. In this paper, the successful examples of using green areas for the mentioned purposes will be investigated and the possibilities of utilizing green areas as post-disaster assembly areas will be evaluated in order to increase the preparedness for disasters in Turkey.