On the Optimal Location of Temporary Housing Base in Crisis Management of Rural Areas: The Case of Central District of Faruj

Iran is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. As the statistics show, 31 cases out of 40 types of natural disasters occurring in the world happens in Iran. Such natural disasters in the country have placed Iran on the list of top ten countries of the world in terms of natural disasters in which the incidence and frequency of natural disasters such as earthquake, flood, and landslide show characteristics typical of it. The north parts of the province, including the mountainous regions of the country located in an area with high and medium hazard are subject to various hazards and natural disasters such as flood, earthquake, landslide, and mountain collapse due to the their ecological, seismic, and geological characteristics as well as their topographic conditions and their special climate. . According to the previous studies, almost every year a number of natural disasters occur in this area in which case the focus of influence of most hazards is related to the rural areas due to their large extent in the country.
Study Area :The central district of Faruj has an area of about 1023 square kilometers covering 4 percent of North Khorasan Province. The district is located on geographical coordinates of 58 degrees to 88 degrees and 55 minutes of east longitude and 36 degrees, 45 minutes to 37 degrees, 40 minutes of the north latitude, at an average elevation of 1500 meters above the sea level. The city leads to Esfarāyen from northwest, from east to Ghochan in Khorasan Razavi Province, and from north to the district of Khabvshanin in Faruj. In this district, currently 58 villages have been recorded; 56 villages are populated while the other two villages are deserted.
Material and The research method used in the study was descriptive-analytic following practical purposes. The theoretical foundations were established based on the studies of documentaries and library research. To select the effective criteria and prioritize them for locating optimal temporary housing base, 30 questionnaires were completed by the village administrators and managers, and experts in geography and rural planning. Because the locating process was a matter of making multiple trait, the cell models were used; the analytical hierarchy models included AHP .AHP is a logical framework to understand and analyze complex decisions by decomposing it into a hierarchical structure to makes it easy. Also in this study, to choose a suitable location for temporary housing crisis management database, a combination of AHP (AHP) and Geographic Information System (GIS) has been used.
The reason to pay attention to the environmental indicators of environmental hazards (earthquake, flood, and landslide) is that the location selected in the first phase should be away from these hazards. For this purpose, the hazards and effective factors should be identified in this phenomenon and the importance of the following criteria were evaluated. After preparing seismicity maps, flood, landslide and topography for the final drawings of environmental factors, and the beat raster maps to locate and integrate maps and effective layers in locating had to be standardized.That is, the layers become capable of being integrated with each other through the use of decision rules. For this purpose, the paired comparisons, product hierarchy, linear and hierarchical process were performed using the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Expert Choice software. According to the final map of locating the environmental factors, it can be concluded that almost 58.5 percent of the central district of Faruj benefits from good conditions and is perfectly suited for the location in which 95 percent of the villages (N=52) out of 55 villages are appropriate for the purpose of temporary housing base in terms of natural indicators and the avoidance of hazards. In addition, only three villages of Agh Cheshme, Armod Aghchi, and Hasht Markh are in poor areas which are relatively appropriate and at greater risk; therefore, they are not suitable for locating temporary housing base.
Through the process of locating emergency accommodation in the area, we came to the following conclusions. According to the environment criteria, earthquake (weight: 569/0) and landslide (weight: 228/0) have higher priority coefficient in locating. This means that villages that are suitable for locating temporary housing are away from environmental hazards. In general, only the village of Mayvan takes the highest scores for the physical location of temporary housing. In addition, the villages of Se Gonbad, Bash Mahale, Kharagh, and Yenge Ghale are placed at the next level benefiting from good conditions, whereas 26 villages under the study are not appropriate in terms of physical facilities and are thus not suitable to locate as temporary housing base.