Locating Relief Centers in Crisis Management with Emphasis on Floods; Case Study: Ilam City

One of the essential responsibilities of urban planners is to designate accommodating locations for the implementation of crisis emergency bases. However, the responsibilities may not be fulfilled unless following the identification of the land’s susceptibilities and limitations in terms of natural disasters, especially flood. In other words, fitting managing measures are impossible to design until the geographic status of the area on which a city is located. Success and effectiveness of any crisis emergency bases’ operation highly depends on the establishment and organization of elements in the relevant time and space. The condition of such elements should be planned based on specific principles and mechanisms. Any failure in complying necessary principles and directives during a process of finding appropriate locations for crisis emergency bases decreases their efficiency as well as leading to additional detrimental conduct, disorder, disturbance, etc. Hence, the present study attempted to evaluate locating priorities for crisis emergency bases in terms of effective criteria, including hospital, fire department, green areas, flood prone zones functions and gas stations, airports, watercourses and passages as well as sportive and religious functions, utilizing hierarchical analysis, fuzzy model and geographic information system. Ultimately, an application of all criteria along with field observation findings resulted in the formation of extensive scopes of priorities of locating proper sites for developing crisis emergency bases. Finding from priority scopes analysis indicated that west areas of the studied zone are more suitable for developing crisis emergency bases in comparison the remaining areas.