Physical Vulnerability Assessment of the Hashtgerd New Town against a Probable Earthquake

Occurrence of natural disasters, especially earthquakes, in urban environments has destructive effects and humans are also increasingly suffering from the harmful effects of these disasters. Therefore, proper recognizing and planning before the accident can reduce the devastating effects of these events, casualties and financial losses left by them. The aim of this study was to identify the vulnerability of the physical tissue of Hashtgerd new city against a probable earthquake.

The present research is applied and descriptive-analytical study. At first, eight indicators, such as, accessibility to open spaces, building density, population density, land use, closeness to fault zone, access to vital services, accessibility to street network and passagechr('39')s width were selected by using the opinion of experts and Likert scale, and finally the critical areas of the city were revealed through quantitative content analysis of indicators and weighting each of them by AHP method in Expert Choice software program, and analyzing the vulnerability of Hashtgerd new town in GIS software.

Only about 18% of the city, which includes phases 1, 2, 3, and part of phase 4, were in a crisis situation. 54.91% of its area had low and very low vulnerability and 26.73% had moderate vulnerability.

The vulnerability of the new city of Hashtgerd can be reduced by increasing the density of green spaces in the city and their proper distribution, controlling population and building density in the direction of the entrance axis and their balanced distribution in the city, increasing the number of vital centers, respecting the privacy of faults, especially in phases 2, 4 and 5 and assigning these points to spaces Urban greenery, proper planning for using the wastelands and the lack of proximity to incompatible uses.