Vulnerability assess of the levels and prioritization of rural settlements against earthquakes using Fuzzy Logic in GIS (case study: Fars Province)

One of the natural disasters that plays a major role in the vulnerability and destruction of rural settlements is earthquake. Vulnerability has a complex concept so that involves various factors and variables and using modern methods could improve vulnerability assess of the levels. The objective of this study is to vulnerability assess the levels and prioritization of rural settlements with the use of operators based on Fuzzy Logic. The Fars province was selected as a case study because of exist many major and minor faults, during the years occured huge earthquakes and theirs rural settlements have a variety of natural and human vulnerability. Because of the physical characteristics, rural areas exposured to high vulnerability is compared with urban areas. In this study, for vulnerability assess the levels and prioritization was used fuzzy operators that including multi criteria aggregation criterion importance and orders weight and two important properties consider to qualitative (linguistic) variables and according to various interest groups and also led to better results. Therefore, by using and aggregating various variables and scenarios, areas with high degrees of risk identified. Then rural settlements exposure risk resulting from relatively pessimistic scenario of natural vulnerability was choiced. Eventually, the human vulnerability of settlements have been prioritized using a moderate scenario. The results in all scenarios showed that South and West areas with high values of Peak Horizontal Acceleration, new geological formations and proximity to active faults as areas with high degrees natural vulnerability of risk has been identified and always happening huge earthquakes but from the perspective of human vulnerability variables is moderate.