Site Selection with Fuzzy DEMATEL for a Post-Earthquake Temporary Shelter in Türkiye

Abstract

Temporary shelter areas established after an earthquake to swiftly build safe living spaces for meeting the urgent housing needs of earthquake victims. Given Türkiye's status as an earthquake-prone country, defining the standards for the establishment and maintenance of these temporary shelter areas is of great importance since they are restoring social order and ensuring people to feel safe after an earthquake. This study identifies and analyzes the evaluation criteria that temporary shelter areas should possess and investigates the causal relationships between them. For this purpose, expert opinions are gathered, and given the inherent uncertainty in human judgment fuzzy logic is incorporated. Hence, to analyze the causal relationships between the criteria, fuzzy DEMATEL method is applied, which is a powerful technique for problem evaluation, allowing unprecise definition of interconnections within a structural model. The application results suggest the criteria related with the social dimension as the most influential.