Vulnerability risk analysis of rural settlements against earthquakes (Case study: the villages of Lamerd County)

One of the stages of spatial planning is identification and ranking of natural hazards and their consequences in different geographic places. In this regard, it is essential to reduce the adverse effects of natural hazards in rural areas by adopting a risk management-based approach to rural sustainable development. So, multi-criteria decision-making methods has been used in environment studies especially in developed countries recently. One of the stage of spatial planning is identifying and ranking natural hazards and their effects on geographic regions. It is essential that development- based approach is used to risk management in order to reduce the adverse effects of natural hazards in rural areas. Lamerd city in Fars province has a special geographical position, and it has always faced this type of environmental damage (earthquake). Given the importance that this village and rural settlements have in this city, it is necessary to evaluate rural settlements of the City base on the degree of Vulnerability to Seismic risks. The data of this descriptive-analysis study is analyzed by statistical documentation. After collecting data from Lamerd city villages, the study used the models of TOPSIS to rate and rank the villages of the city according to 22 studied variables. In this study, 22 indicators used to assess the seismic vulnerability of villages of Lamerd. The results of using multi-criteria in this study indicated that in TOPSIS model the village of Kal with a score of 0/5284, the village of Sigar with a score of 0/5221 and the village of Eshkanan with a score of 0/4754 are ranked from first to third. Also, at Lamerd City, 2 high-risk villages, 1 medium-risk rural and 4 low risk villages are equally vulnerable to earthquake hazards.