An Assessment Of Flood Risk Factors In Riverine Cities Of Turkey: Lessons For Resilience And Urban Planning

摘要

Significant amount of the world’s population is under a severe risk ofhydro-meteorological disasters, and this is expected to continue in anincreasing rate due to climate change as observed in the last sixty years.From 1955 to 1975, annual average of worldwide flood events were around15, while two decades later this average almost quadrupled as reaching57 events per year. It is followed by another increase in the last twentyyears and reached up to 156 events per year (CRED EM-DAT, 2016).Weather-induced natural events like typhoons, storms, cyclones, heatwaves, floods and droughts are expected to increase in occurrence and tospread out more extensively in the near future. It is mainly the coastal andriverine cities that are at most risk of weather-induced natural events. Theincreasing concentration of economic activities and human populationsin such cities is likely to intensify the economic and social impacts of suchevents in years to come (Nicholls et al., 2007). According to estimations ofJongman et al. (2012) global economic exposure to both river and coastalflooding would increase at high rates in 2050, reaching to 158 trillion USD.As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states in its 5thAssessment Report, there has been a remarkable increase in number ofheavy precipitation and flood events worldwide during the past century(IPCC, 2014). Thus, it is of vital importance for cities to find out ways tocope with adverse impacts of climate change, including various sorts offloods. Cities, which develop and employ appropriate policy responses toaddress flood risks and introduce new and alternative ways of living withflood hazards as part of their mitigation and adaptation actions, wouldprobably become more resilient against today’s and upcoming flooddisasters.