Globalization has become a major issue of focus as rapid urban populations and urbanization effects are on the rise. A critical need arises for effective urban planning for Istanbul in relation to the use of a hybrid approach integrating AHP-Entropy and GIS for emergency facility planning. In this paper, the combination of AHP and Entropy methods was used for evaluating criterion weights subjectively and objectively. These techniques were utilized with regard to the assessment of suitable areas for planning new urban emergency facilities for Istanbul province which experiences increasing urban fire-related emergencies. AHP and Entropy have been used to evaluate the weights of determined criteria from expert preference judgments and GIS for processing, analysis and visualization of the model result in the form of a suitability map for new urban emergency facilities. Validation of the model was performed on the criteria with the strongest influence in the decision outcome and spatially visualized using the sensitivity analysis (SA) method of one-at-a-time (OAT). From the findings, it was estimated that 28.1% of the project area, accounting for a third of it, is likely to be exposed to the risk of urban fires and therefore immediate planning of new urban emergency facilities is recommended for adequate fire service coverage and protection.

This study combines AHP and GIS to provide decision makers with a model to ensure optimal site location(s) for fire stations selected. The roles of AHP and GIS in determining optimal locations are explained, criteria for site selection are outlined, and case study results for finding the optimal fire station locations in Istanbul, Turkey are included. The city of Istanbul has about 13 million residents and is the largest and most populated city in Turkey. The rapid and constant growth of Istanbul has resulted in the increased number of fire related cases. Fire incidents tend to increase year by year in parallel with city expansion, population and hazardous material facilities. Istanbul has seen a rise in reported fire incidents from 12 769 in 1994 to 30 089 in 2009 according to the interim report of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Department of Fire Brigade. The average response time was approximately 7 min 3 s in 2009. The goal of this study is to propose optimal sites for new fire station creation to allow the Fire Brigade in Istanbul to reduce the average response time to 5 min or less. After determining the necessity of suggesting additional fire stations, the following steps are taken into account: six criteria are considered in this analysis. They are: High Population Density (HPD); Proximity to Main Roads (PMR); Distance from Existing Fire Stations (DEF); Distance from Hazardous Material Facilities (DHM); Wooden Building Density (WBD); and Distance from the Areas Subjected to Earthquake Risk (DER). DHM criterion, with the weight of 40%, is the most important criterion in this analysis. The remaining criteria have a weight range from 9% to 16%. Moreover, the following steps are performed: representation of criterion map layers in GIS environment; classification of raster datasets; calculating the result raster map (suitability map for potential fire stations); and offering a model that supports decision makers in selecting fire station sites. The existing 35 fire stations are used and 17 fire stations are newly suggested in the study area.

Definition of an earthquake includes parameters with respect to region of interest. Each of those parameters has different weights on the earthquake ground motion and effect. This study examines the weight of common parameters that have an influence on the effects of earthquakes. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is used for factor weighting of each parameter and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used for simulating the results of the AHP on a spatial environment. In this study, it is aimed to generate a hierarchical structure of the model for the simulation of an earthquake hazard map (EHM). The parameters of the EHM, which are selected by the criterion of non-correlated factors, are: topography, distance to epicenter, soil classification, liquefaction, and fault/focal mechanism. As a result of the study, weights of the parameters that affect the earthquake ground motion at the study area are determined and compared with a selected attenuation relation map.