An Analysis of Iran's Cities Distributions in Related to Earthquake Hazard

Abstract

Natural disasters such as earthquakes often result in extensive casualties and damage. The location of Iran and many other developing countries in active tectonic regions of the world emphasizes the necessity to develop a comprehensive disaster management system. Iran is located in the Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt which is one of the most active tectonic regions of the world. Iran is a country with about 75 million people living and the history of the region indicates strong earthquakes. Population centralization in urban area and metropolitans with environmental disaster, especially in developing countries such as Iran increase metropolitan’s vulnerability against earthquake hazard. Iran is a vulnerable against earthquake hazard, because of distribution of cities and population centralization in its metropolitan. But the amount of damage and injured in an earthquake in Iran’s cities is different. Population growth with increase of cities number cause to sustain a loss of people and appurtenances. This research tries to help to planning for earthquake crisis. Type of research is applied and method of data collection is documentary and methods of analysis are; population analysis with urban system analysis and urban distribution system in related to earthquake hazard. In beginning the situation of urban system and locations of cities are studied, than the relationship between distribution of cities and earthquake hazard studied. This paper examines the spatial distribution of the population and focusing on urban system patterns.