Urban Shelters Localization with Passive Defense Approach-Case Study: Saqqez City

Cities as the physical and human assets aggregation centers, will toll a lot at crisis time. So attending to passive defense matter can considerably decrease the damages. Passive defense is one of those matters that have become attended during recent years at urban plans and schematizations. And one of the passive defense policies - in all countries generally and in Iran specially - is constructing urban shelters to protect citizens’ lives and decreasing human harms. Staying in shelters provides the ability of habitation and temporary people lives for one or two months and also provides preserving and modulating the activities, managing the environment, resistance and securing urban life.
The city of Saqqez, as the center of Saqqez division at Kurdistan province, is subjected to present research which experiences many natural incidents as a mountainous city, of which, flood is the most important one. Generally further to geological status of this city, there exist several agents which increase the probability of crisis at Saqqez such as existence of loose earth, hillsides susceptible for sliding or stone staving, unobserving the construction rules and precepts, instability of the earth, lack of rebuilding of damaged zones, lack of suitable pathways, lack of fundamental studies and works for solving the inundation problem and repelling flood, missing the basic plans for encountering future tensions and hundreds of other problems which appear now in Saqqez city, so that if they continue and remain unsolved, they may lead to some hard knots and unsolvable problems and if such situations occurred, unless expending immense charges and hard trying of planners can’t improve the created situation. One of the most important tasks that appear after accident is temporary or semi-temporary habitation and consequently permanent habitation of survivors of accident.
So present research have been codified with the main aim localization of urban shelters with passive defense approach and the minor aims specification and utilizing some criterions for selecting the best shelter for temporary habitation, helping the urban guardians and deciders in prioritizing latent locations and selecting the best location for making shelter.
This research is regarded among applied researches, and descriptive-analytical method is used for codifying it. Needed information is imitated through library, documents, fieldwork, statistical results and census tables. In this research based on available statics at detailed plan of Saqqez city and also a fieldwork at 2014, the ANP model at environment of Super Decision software has utilized for evaluating the criterions. Thereafter informative layers and proportionate maps with criterions was provided finally the combined map of criterions has been extracted which shows the best location for building shelter in this zone.
Result & According to the performed studies, in order to answer the first question, the most effective criterions at localization of safe space of shelters: criterions of distance from clinic and infirmary centers, distance from fire stations, distance from open areas, distance from educational centers, distance from police stations and military centers, population accumulation, adaptability of urban land uses and accessing to communication network have been considered. In order to answer the second question, suitable locations for generating shelters at crisis times, are those points of city which have enough open areas and at the same time are compatible with surrounding land uses which have rather better potential for habitation of injured people. Those zones with incompatible and medley urban use and insufficient area have minimum possible ability for planning shelters. Thus central part has a high ability for habitation of injured people because of having proper open areas and also suitable accessibility.
Achieved results of this research show that by compilation of different layers of effective urban land uses, final map of optimized areas for generating urban shelters classified at five parcels from very good to very lean and 9 preferred locations have been considered which among them green areas, arid lands and schools have maximum scores for temporal habitation. Thus 3 parks in the city, 1 school and other open and arid lands have been preferred. According to performed analysis and results, designation of equipment and necessary services at selected locations for temporary habitation specially parks and gardens such as specifying heliport, toilets, water sources, etc. are obligatory then it is not necessary to spend time for providing them during any misadventure in order to not any tribulation retards the fast relief process.
Constructing the wide open spaces such as parks, gardens, sport fields, etc. with at least 2000 square meter area inside the neighboring units simultaneously with performing other constructional works among these areas are useful and effective to fast evacuation of injured people to this areas and establishing the temporal houses.
Informing and introducing safe places for people habitation is necessary and all governmental and private places, gardens, military places, stadiums and sport fields, bureaus and agencies, relief centers, etc. which have suitable spaces among the city or around it, by respecting protection and safety principles can use their spaces multipurpose and contribute in this matter.