A destructive earthquake is anticipated to occur in Istanbul in the near future. The effects of this earthquake on human, infrastructure and economy are anticipated to be enormous. The Metropolitan Municipality of Istanbul has initiated a disaster plan to mitigate the effects of the disaster. Locating disaster response facilities to execute post-disaster activities and relief operations is a part of this plan. In this study, we address the disaster response and relief facility location problem for Istanbul. Our aim is to study the situation and provide insights on the effects of the number of facilities and their locations. We propose a two-stage distribution system that utilizes existing public facilities as well as the new facilities to be established. We develop a mathematical model that tries to minimize the average distance to the population who need relief services while opening a small number of facilities. We analyze the trade-offs between these two objectives under various circumstances and present the results.

In this thesis, risk management methods are investigated in order to integrate risk management practices into the Turkish Aerospace industry. The research presents the sequence of risk management processes as identification of risk, analysis of risk, risk planning etc. Risk analysis methods named as Risk Ranking and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) are investigated in order to improve reliability and safety of the systems or processes in the aerospace industry. The main aim of using risk ranking and AHP together is to translate the knowledge in the Turkish Aviation Industry to a tangible form with a quantitative approach and to prepare a basis for probabilistic risk analysis. Instrument Landing System (ILS) has been considered only in order to facilitate a demonstration how risk management can be done in this context. This study investigates and seeks to create awareness for risk management practices within Turkish Aviation industry.

In this study, the failure mechanism of the shore landslide which occured at Degirmendere coast region during 17 August 1999 Kocaeli (Izmit) - Turkey earthquake is analyzed. Geotechnical studies of the region are at hand, which reveal soil properties and geological formation of the region as well as the topography of the shore basin after deformations. The failure is analyzed as a landslide and permanent displacements are calculated by Newmark Method under 17 August 1999 Izmit record, scaled to a maximum acceleration of 0.4g. There are discussions on the main dominating mechanism of failure / landslide, liquefaction, fault rupture and lateral spreading. According to the studies, the failure mechanism is a seismically induced shore landslide also triggered by liquefaction and fault rupture, accompanied by the mechanism of lateral spreading by turbulence. A seismically induced landslide is discussed and modeled in this study. The finite element programs TELSTA and TELDYN are employed for static and dynamic analyses. Slope stability analyses are performed with the program SLOPE. The permanent displacements are calculated with Newmark Method, with the help of a MATLAB program, without considering the excess pore pressures.

Estimation of the ground motion parameters is extremely important for engineers to make the structures safer and more economical, so it is one of the main issues of Earthquake Engineering. Peak values of the ground motions obtained either from existing records or with the help of attenuation relationships, have been used as a useful parameter to estimate the effect of an earthquake on a specific location. Peak Ground Velocities (PGV) of a ground motion is used extensively in the recent years as a measure of intensity and as the primary source of energy-related analysis of structures. Consequently, PGV values are used to construct emergency response systems like Shake Maps or to determine the deformation demands of structures. Despite the importance of the earthquakes for Turkey, there is a lack of suitable attenuation relationships for velocity developed specifically for the country. The aim of this study is to address this deficiency by developing an attenuation relationship for the Peak Ground Velocities of the chosen database based on the strong ground motion records of Turkey. A database is processed with the established techniques and corrected database for the chosen ground motions is formed. Five different forms of equations that were used in the previous studies are selected to be used as models and by using nonlinear regression analysis, best fitted mathematical relation for attenuation is obtained. The result of this study can be used as an effective tool for seismic hazard assessment studies for Turkey. Besides, being a by-product of this study, a corrected database of strong ground motion recordings of Turkey may prone to be a valuable source for the future researchers.

Due to the randomness inherent in the occurrence of earthquakes with respect to time, space and magnitude as well as other various sources of uncertainties, seismic hazard assessment should be carried out in a probabilistic manner. Basic steps of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis are the delineation of seismic sources, assessment of the earthquake occurrence characteristics for each seismic source, selection of the appropriate ground motion attenuation relationship and identification of the site characteristics. Seismic sources can be modeled as area and line sources. Also, the seismic activity that can not be related with any major seismic sources can be treated as background source in which the seismicity is assumed to be uniform or spatially smoothed. Exponentially distributed magnitude and characteristic earthquake models are often used to describe the magnitude recurrence relationship. Poisson and renewal models are used to model the occurrence of earthquakes in the time domain. In this study, the sensitivity of seismic hazard results to the models associated with the different assumptions mentioned above is investigated. The effects of different sources of uncertainties involved in probabilistic seismic hazard analysis methodology to the results are investigated for a number of sites with different distances to a single fault. Two case studies are carried out to examine the influence of different assumptions on the final results based on real data as well as to illustrate the implementation of probabilistic seismic hazard analysis methodology for a large region (e.g. a country) and a smaller region (e.g. a province).

The August 17, 1999 Kocaeli-Turkey Earthquake (Mw=7.4) caused severe damage to the structures and lifelines in the Marmara region. Soil liquefaction was identified as one of the major causes of this damage. The aim of this study is to determine geotechnical and earthquake engineering factors that contribute to the structural damage observed in Sakarya city after 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake. For this purpose, the results of an extensive field investigation program compiled by General Directorate of Disaster Affairs including subsurface soil characterization and documenting structural performance data were used. The database was carefully screened for poor quality data and was transferred to geographic information system (GIS) framework. Maximum likelihood methodology for the probabilistic assessment of seismically induced structural performance was chosen as the statistical tool. After series of sensitivity analyses, important geotechnical and earthquake engineering parameters of the problem were selected as i) liquefaction severity index, ii) post liquefaction volumetric settlement, iii) peak ground acceleration and, iv) spectral acceleration defined at the period range of conventional buildings. In addition to these parameters, structural performance defined as a) no damage and light, b) moderate damage, c) heavy damage and collapse, as well as the number of storeys of each structure were used as to correlate structural damage with geotechnical earthquake engineering factors. As a conclusion series of vulnerability functions specific to Adapazari shaken by Kocaeli Earthquake were developed. Performance predictions of these vulnerability functions were shown to be consistent with as high as 65 percent of the observed structural performance.

In this thesis, stochastic methods are utilized to improve a familiar comprehensive probabilistic model to obtain realistic estimates of the earthquake insurance premium rates in different seismic zones of Turkey. The model integrates the information on future earthquake threat with the information on expected earthquake damage to buildings. The quantification of the future earthquake threat is achieved by making use of the seismic hazard analysis techniques. Due to the uncertainties involved, the hazard that may occur at a site during future earthquakes has to be treated in a probabilistic manner. Accessibility of past earthquake data from a number of different data sources, encourages the consideration of every single earthquake report. Seismic zonation of active earthquake generating regions has been improved as recent contributions are made available. Finally, up-to-date data bases have been utilized to establish local attenuation relationships reflecting the expected earthquake wave propagation and its randomness more effectively. The damage that may occur to structures during future earthquakes involves various uncertainties and also has to be treated in a probabilistic manner. For this purpose, damage probability matrices (DPM), expressing what will happen to buildings, designed according to some particular set of requirements, during earthquakes of various intensities, are constructed from observational and estimated data. With the above considerations, in order to demonstrate the application of the improved probabilistic method, earthquake insurance premium rates are computed for reinforced concrete and masonry buildings constructed in different seismic zones of Turkey.

Search and Rescue (SAR) operations aim at finding missing objects with minimum time in a determined area. There are fundamentally two problems in these operations. The first problem is assessing highly reliable probability distribution maps, and the second is determining the search pattern that sweeps the area from the air as fast as possible. In this study, geographic information systems (GIS) and multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) are integrated and a new model is developed based upon Search Theory in order to find the position of the missing object as quickly as possible with optimum resource allocation. Developed model is coded as a search planning tool for the use of search and rescue planners. Inputs of the model are last known position of the missing object and related clues about its probable position. In the developed model, firstly related layers are arranged according to their priorities based on subjective expert opinion. Then a multi criteria decision method is selected and each data layer is multiplied by a weight corresponding to search expert&rsquo / s rank. Then a probability map is established according to the result of MCDA methods. In the second phase, the most suitable search patterns used in literature are applied based on established probability map. The developed model is a new approach to shortening the time in SAR operations and finding the suitable search pattern for the data of different crashes.

DIRECT USE OF PGV FOR ESTIMATING PEAK NONLINEAR OSCILLATOR DISPLACEMENTS K&Uuml / &Ccedil / &Uuml / KDOGAN, Bilge Recently established approximate methods for estimating the lateral deformation demands on structures are based on the prediction of nonlinear oscillator displacements (Sd,ie). In this study, a predictive model is proposed to estimate the inelastic spectral displacement as a function of peak ground velocity (PGV). Prior to the generation of the proposed model, nonlinear response history analysis is conducted on several building models of wide fundamental period range and hysteretic behavior to observe the performance of selected demands and the chosen ground-motion intensity measures (peak ground acceleration, PGA, peak ground velocity, PGV and elastic pseudo spectral acceleration at the fundamental period (PSa(T1)). Confined to the building models used and ground motion dataset, the correlation studies revealed the superiority of PGV with respect to the other intensity measures while identifying the variation in global deformation demands of structural systems (i.e., maximum roof and maximum interstory drift ratio). This rational is the deriving force for proposing the PGV based prediction model. The proposed model accounts for the variation of Sd,ie for bilinear hysteretic behavior under constant ductility (&micro / ) and normalized strength ratio (R) associated with postyield stiffness ratios of = 0% and = 5%. Confined to the limitations imposed by the ground-motion database, the predictive model can estimate Sd,ie by employing the PGV predictions obtained from the attenuation relationships. This way the influence of important seismological parameters can be incorporated to the variation of Sd,ie in a fairly rationale manner. Various case studies are presented to show the consistent estimations of Sd,ie by the proposed model using the PGV values obtained from recent ground motion prediction equations.

The purpose of this study is to assess the engineering geological and geotechnical characteristics and to perform seismic hazard studies of the Upper Pliocene to Quaternary (Plio-Quaternary) deposits located towards the north of Ankara through surface wave testing methods. Based on a general engineering geological and seismic site characterization studies, site classification systems are assigned in seismic hazard assessments. The objective of the research is to determine the regional and local seismic soil conditions (i.e., shear wave velocities, soil predominant periods and soil amplification factors) and to characterize the soil profile of the sites in this region by the help of surface geophysical methods. These studies have been supported by engineering geological and geotechnical field studies carried out prior to and during this study. By integrating these studies, local soil conditions and dynamic soil characteristics for the study area have been assessed by detailed soil characterization in the region. As a result, seismic hazard assessments have been performed for &Ccedil / ubuk and its close vicinity with the aid of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) through establishing seismic characterization and local soil conditions of the area.