The study shows the importance of the lakou, which is a spatial manifestation of the familial social structure in the Haitian culture, through the analysis of post-disaster temporary settlements, showing that through their own devices endogenous inhabitants create the lakou in post-disaster temporary settlements. The methodology was qualitative through interviews, observations, and site mapping, and qualitative coding was used to uncover the emergent themes. This study establishes the importance of the lakou in community vibrancy and demonstrates how the lakou adds to the resilience of the survivors living in such settlements. The unprecedented transformation of the lakou from a kinship based settlement pattern to a more inclusive non-familial pattern points to the importance of the spatial and social manifestation in the development of community in a settlement. It is conjectured that this resiliency factor can be useful in the process of turning a post-disaster settlement into a successful permanent settlement.

Natural hazards are the reality of today&amp / #8217 / s world, which considerably affect people&amp / #8217 / s living conditions. As they cannot be prevented, the basic precautions should be taken before the occurrence to protect people. At this point, the preparedness for any threat is really important, which does decrease destructive effects of the hazard for communities and shorten recovery interventions. In terms of preparedness, identification of vulnerable people in the community gives an important contribution for better planning in disaster management. In this respect, this thesis aims to develop a methodology in order to define vulnerable groups in terms of their social conditions for any possible hazard, with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. Moreover, the thesis aims to find out an interrelation between hazards and vulnerability, to build awareness about identification of socially vulnerable groups in the pre- and post-disaster planning. A case study area is selected in earthquake-prone Pendik, Istanbul, in order to find the contribution of the assessment. A study is carried out to describe social vulnerability levels in the study area using GIS. Criterion standardization, weighting and combining are accomplished by multi criteria evaluation methods. These calculations are supported with five explorative spatial data analyses to understand global trends and spatial interactions of the study data. The objectivity of the assessment and the complicated structure of the study data are also discussed. The main outcomes of the methodology and its applications in the case study area show that, the southeast part of Pendik is socially vulnerable to any possible hazard.