Assessing the vulnerability of the urban old textures against earthquakes and the role of district participation in themCase study: Feiz Abad district in the city of Kermanshah

Earthquake is an instance of the natural phenomena that incurs heavy losses and casualties in vulnerable countries of developing countries and in urban places in particular .Since our country is located in the seismicity belt and due to the numerous faults in its structural ground , urban places are affected heavily by its consequences. The urban and problematic old textures as well as suburban and unauthorized residential places are more exposed to the danger of quakes than other urban structures due to reasons of lack of observing engineering and technical standards in building, inefficient communication network, lack of installations and urban facilities . One of the most important measures in managing the quake crisis is to assist the victims of the quake . Of the most effective activities of rescue in the initial stages of such crises and after that is the instantaneous formation of popular groups in the form of urban districts . In this paper , first the old texture of the district of Feiz Abad in the city of Kermanshah is investigated in terms of vulnerability against the quake with regards to indices of the type of material, the age of buildings , number of storey, land use type , occupancy level, and the quality of building where in total 70/61 % of the district was known to be vulnerable based on the existing indices. In the end , through investigating the concept of participation , the structural framework of the district in the assistance processes , guidelines in order to promote the district participation and to reduce the impacts originating from the quakes in proportion to vulnerability are provided .

Keywords:

Vulnerability , Quake , Old texture , Participation , Rescue , District