Vulnerability Assessments of Decayed UrbanFabric with Passive Defense Principles UsingAHP MethodCase Study: City of Ardabil

As the city grows and expands and urbanization, cities are facing new dimensions of threats and a high volume of damagedue to the concentration of population and wealth. Therefore, the vulnerability assessment of cities to environmentalhazards and developing appropriate strategies to reduce losses is inevitable. The city of Ardebil, due to its strategicand border position in the northwest of Iran, has always been considered as one of the areas threatened by the enemy. But itis more vulnerable to other urban points due to problems and failures of physical, social and economic problems. Thus, themain purpose of the present study is to assess the vulnerability of the decayed urban fabric of the city of Ardabil from thepoint of passive defense. This study is applied and the general approach is descriptive-analytical and data and informationis mainly collected through field methods (interview and observation). In the present study, based on the specific conditionsof the decayed urban fabric of Ardebil city, as well as previous research studies, 10 indexes have been defined to assessthe vulnerability, and sub-indexes have been considered for each index. In the next step, using the expert’s opinions, eachcriterion and indicators are weighted and prioritized using AHP method in Expert Choice software and finally using GISmaps the vulnerability maps of the decayed urban fabric of the city of Ardabil is provided. The results shows that %47.83 ofthe fragments located in the decayed urban fabric area had a high vulnerability, %33.71 moderate vulnerability and %18.46had low vulnerability.