Determining the Optimal Algorithm to Locate the Best Place for Earthquake Refugee Camps: A Case Study for Tehran, Iran

Javad Sadidi¹, Reyhaneh Saeedi^2*, Aliasghar Torahi³, Parviz Zeaiean Firuzabadi¹

¹Department of GIS and Remote Sensing, Faculty of Geography, Kaharazmi University, Tehran, Iran.
²Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran.
³Department of Remote Sensing and GIS, Faculty of Geographical Sciences, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran.

DOI: 10.4236/pos.2014.54012                

Abstract

Iran is one of the regions which are most prone for earthquakes annually having a large number of financial and mortality and financial losses. Every year around the world, a large number of people lose their home and life due to natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. It is necessary to provide and specify some suitable places for settling the homeless people before occurrence of the earthquake, one of the most important factors in crisis planning and management. GIS has a vital role in crisis management. By using GIS, it would be possible to manage the spatial data and reach several goals by making use of the analyses existing in it. Among the applications of GIS in crisis management there is location of suitable and safe place for settling the injured people after the occurrence of the earthquake. With respect to the importance of specifying weight to the required criteria so as to find safe and suitable places for settling the injured people optimally, the present research is about to show the algorithms AHP, Fuzzy, TOPSIS and OWA as being suitable in terms of accuracy and speed. We discuss several natural and human criteria to choose the optimal place considering the importance of the issue. At the end we did a comparison among these methods. According to the features of each method, combined methods of Fuzzy and AHP can create high ability in locating for resettling of victims. So we can improve all these methods before being combined by described methods.

Keywords

Crisis Management, Temporary Settlement, Earthquake, Hierarchical Process, Fuzzy Process, TOPSIS Process, OWA Process, Geographic Information System (GIS)

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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