An Analysis of Urban Housing Vulnerability Against Earthquake Using Topsis Model (Case Study: Urmia City)

Earthquake has historically been considered as a cause for vast destruction of buildings, casualties, and financial damages in Iranian cities. To prevent such a disaster it is necessary to construct resistant buildings and retrofitting the existing ones. The main aim of the present study was analyzing the vulnerability of houses in Urmia against the earthquake and ranking the districts of the city using TOPSIS method. The applied method was descriptive-analytical and the type of research was applicable with a quantitative-qualitative approach. Documentary and field methods were applied to collect the required data. Based on TOPSIS method, the findings of the present study indicated that the average rate of vulnerability of houses for the whole city of Urmia was 0.485. The highest rate was belonged to district 4 with a TOPSIS score of 0.818 and the lowest one to district 1 with a score of 0.296. The score of district 5 was 0.338 which is considered as a moderated range of vulnerability against the earthquake.