Urban Social Vulnerability Modeling to Earthquake Using Analytic Hierarchy Process and ARC GIS Software (Case Study: Zone1 of Tabriz City)

Despite technological progresses in various dimensions, natural disasters especially earthquake has always been a threat for human activities resulting in damages and losses especially in developing countries. Until recent decades, opinions and theories regarding vulnerability of earthquake were limited to physical factors, but recently, they emphasize on the multidimensionality of vulnerability called the concept of social vulnerability. Using four basic indexes of housing quality, population specifications, socio-economic specification, accessibility to specific land-uses and the related sub-indicators, this research not only aims to provide an evaluation of social vulnerability versus earthquake in Tabriz city to explain the relationship between physical and social vulnerability but to present a model of social vulnerability to earthquake, in zone 1 of Tabriz city.At first, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used to weighting indicators and subindicators and then after preparing vulnerability layer (map) for each index, final social vulnerability map is outlined created by overlapping layers in GIS. Also using TOPSIS Technique, five areas under the study have been ranked based on social vulnerability. Findings indicate that there is a significant relationship between physical vulnerability and social vulnerability in the study area. Further in unit district analysis, the area 3 has the most social vulnerability to earthquake and the others are ranked 5,4,1,2 respectively.