The Relationship Between Socio-Economic Development and Social and Economic Vulnerability Levels of Cities in Turkey

 Disasters occur frequently, and people suffer because of consequences of these disasters. Both the recent disasters in our country (1999 earthquake), and disasters in the World (South Asia earthquake and tsunami in 2004, Pakistan Earthquake and Hurricane Katrina in the USA in 2005, humanitarian crisis in Darfur, earthquakes in China in 2009 and Haiti and Chile in 2010, flood in Pakistan and, lately earthquake and following tsunami in Japan and drought in Africa) have revealed the many sides and size of the losses which are caused by disasters.Losses which occur after a disaster may differ from one country to another. Especially underdeveloped or developing countries suffer much more comparing to developed countries. Thus, it can be claimed that there is some correlation between development level and disaster vulnerability. However, in some cases this argument may not be true and sometimes some developed cities or countries might be more vulnerable.The purpose of this study is to analyze whether there is a correlation between development level of a city and economic and social vulnerability and if the answer is yes then to find the direction and measure of this correlation. The study uses statistics for 81 cities in Turkey and analyzes data with different approaches. The results show that although there is some correlation between development level and social and economic vulnerability, some differences also exist. Social and economic vulnerability is partly a problem of undevelopment or underdevelopment, but to reduce the possible losses of disasters, detailed analysis of vulnerability is necessary.
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