Case Study In Istanbul Research Articles

Environmental consequences of rehabilitation of residential buildings in Turkey: A case study of Istanbul

This paper explains a method developed to assess environmental performance achieved by rehabilitation of residential buildings in Turkey. Several measures focussing on a reduction in the heating demand were investigated such as replacement of window and insulation of different elements of building skin. The influence of several building characteristics was moreover examined such as window to wall ratio (WWR), orientation and building age. Another important aspect which affects environmental performance is climate. In the context of this method, rehabilitations were proposed for temperate-humid climates like Istanbul. According to the assessment results, an environmental performance is obtained for all proposed rehabilitations. When proposed rehabilitations are analysed separately, the environmental performance ratios resulting from the rehabilitations of exterior walls and projected floors, roof, window system, and floors above unheated spaces reduce respectively. WWR has the highest effect on the environmental performance ratios obtained by rehabilitations. The effects of building age and orientation are in negligible amounts when compared to that of WWR. In the future, these assessments should be carried out for different climatic regions of Turkey as well. This method can be used to assess existing and new buildings in terms of environmental impacts by architects, contractors, building owners or municipal authorities.

Changes in Land-Use Preferences of Small-, Medium- and Large-Scale Industries Located in Metropolitan Areas (Case Study in Istanbul)

ABSTRACTIn metropolitan areas, the changing spatial land-use preferences of the industrial sector are the most important determinants in the forming of the macro-form. Metropolitan areas, especially in developing European and Asian countries, become troubled cities with agglomerations of population and investment as a result of failures to apply satisfactory macro-policies and plans throughout the country. Industrial investments on various scales and the land-use preferences of investors have changed over time. The land preferences of production and headquarters of the manufacturing sectors have become basic determinants in the formation of settlement systems due to the transformations that occur alongside technological, economic and social development. This article examines whether or not the basic land-use criterion of the manufacturing sector changes in small-, medium- and large-scale businesses according to their labour structure, defined through an examination of the sectoral structure and relations of scale. Taking the increasing rate of the Gross National Product of the industrial sector in metropolitan areas in every country into account, and examining the land-use preferences of various industrial sub-sectors and scales will serve as an important input when making new planning decisions. The industrial land-use criterion will be effective in the transformation, reorganization or directing of new focuses for the agglomerated industrial structure, especially in Istanbul, which features both Asian and European metropolitan area characteristics. This article will define the existing industrial structure of the Istanbul metropolitan area; and differences between the various scales of land-use preferences within industrial investments will be presented, based on the findings of two investigations carried out over a 5-year period. Several important criteria for industrial investors seeking to establish themselves in metropolitan areas will be determined in the article.

Stream corridors as indicators of watershed land use: A case study in Istanbul

Resumen en: Riparian ecosystems as components of stream corridors provide a range of regulating ecosystem services including water production. Water quality, a compo...

Urban Renewal in Istanbul: Reconfigured Spaces, Robotic Lives

AbstractThe article discusses Turkey's property‐led residential redevelopment model. This entails the demolition of an existing settlement, replacing it with blocks of apartments (usually constructed on the exact same site and at a higher density), some of which are then made available to displaced residents for purchase via mortgage loans with long maturities. While the authorities promote this model of urban renewal as an innovative public housing policy, I argue that, far from being an exception to market‐rate housing, the model is in fact a market‐disciplinary tool. It seeks to incorporate into the formal market not just spontaneously developed and only partially regulated spaces, but also the conduct of residents living in these informal neighborhoods. The article contributes to the immense literature on urban renewal and organized struggles around the right to housing by showing that urban renewal is not simply about dispossession and displacement. In the Turkish case, urban renewal does not necessarily seek to displace poor residents (even though it often ends up doing so), rather to incorporate them into a nascent mortgage origination market. The second half of the article introduces and elaborates on a case study in Istanbul.

A TWO-PHASED FUZZY MULTICRITERIA SELECTION AMONG PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION INVESTMENTS FOR POLICY-MAKING AND RISK GOVERNANCE

Public transportation can be viewed as a key determinant and consequence of the social and spatial formation and development of contemporary cities and regions. Transportation policy generally combines four categories of instruments, i.e., investment, pricing, regulation and subsidy, to generate viable alternatives. Capital investment in public transportation supports the purchase of equipment and facilities including rolling stock, tracks, control equipment, and the construction of terminals, stations, parking lots, maintenance facilities and power generating facilities. Risk governance for public transportation investments looks at how risk-related decision-making unfolds when a range of actors is involved, requiring co-ordination and possibly reconciliation between a profusion of roles, perspectives, goals and activities. In this paper, a two-phased multicriteria methodology is proposed to select the best investment alternative for public transportation with respect to the predetermined criteria. In the first phase, a selection among transportation types is made, and in the second phase, a selection among transportation modes of the selected transportation type is made. A case study for Istanbul is given in the application section.

A fuzzy AHP based decision support system for disaster center location selection and a case study for Istanbul

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose a disaster logistics center location selection decision support system, based on analytic hierarchy/fuzzy analytic hierarchy process methods, which will serve to fulfill the needs of disaster victims and rescue teams after a possible earthquake, and to implement the proposed systems for Istanbul.Design/methodology/approachDetermining the appropriate location from among the possibilities by taking many sophisticated and inter‐related processes and parameters into consideration under stringent constraints is one of the keystones of logistics. Disaster logistics center location selections are extremely complex and vital. In this paper, analytic hierarchy/fuzzy analytic hierarchy process methods are used to compose a decision support system for determining the location of disaster logistics centers. The criteria and the weighting for the criteria that are used are determined via a questionnaire technique applied to specialists working in the Istanbul Center of Disaster Coordination.FindingsResults gathered from the implementation of the proposed models to the chosen case illustrate that systems successfully determine the location, and both models point out the same result with different weights.Originality/valueThe paper introduces two disaster logistics center location selection decision support systems (fuzzy and crisp) and presents an empirical case study of the proposed models for Istanbul. The proposed model and outcomes from the application may shed light on future work, especially in the field of disaster logistics management.

Exploring parental concerns about children's interactions in gated communities: a case study in Istanbul

During the last decade, massive changes in cities in Turkey and elsewhere have significantly impacted on the outdoor interactions of children. High levels of urbanization and the diverse demographic character of city populations have modified urban development structures. Planners and policy makers regrettably do not place priority on children's well-being when making decisions about new urbanization policies. This study explores the concerns of parents for their children's use of outdoor space in a gated community which is separated physically and secured from the surrounding neighborhood. In this qualitative study, face-to-face interviews with parents of elementary school children were undertaken. Parents were asked to describe their attitudes to allowing their children to use the residential quarter for play. Parents reported on four themes to assess the range of influences on (1) safety and environmental factors, (2) level of independence, (3) play facilities, and (4) social aspects. In relation to safety and environmental factors, the focus of questions was on children's access to quarter facilities, internal transportation, pedestrian activity, and security installations. Results indicated that children's mobility directly depends on parental concerns about the conditions of the gated community in relation to safety and environmental factors, security factors, quality of play facilities, and social aspects. The findings of the study regarding parental concerns raise questions about the conditions of gated communities and their impact on children's outdoor experiences.

Assessment of health-care waste treatment alternatives using fuzzy multi-criteria decision making approaches

Health-care waste (HCW) management is a high priority environmental, public and health concern in developing countries. The management and treatment of HCW are gaining more attention with the rising awareness. The objective of this research is to propose multi-criteria decision making techniques for conducting an analysis based on multi-level hierarchical structure and fuzzy logic for the evaluation of HCW treatment alternatives. The ideal and anti-ideal solutions are taken into consideration simultaneously in the developed approaches to account for the individuals’ desire to be both as close as possible to the ideal and as distant as possible from the anti-ideal. The proposed decision approaches enable the decision-makers to use linguistic terms, and thus, reduce their cognitive burden in the evaluation process. Furthermore, a hierarchy of evaluation criteria and their related sub-criteria is employed in the presented approaches in order to conduct a more effective analysis. The computational procedures of the proposed frameworks are illustrated through a case study in Istanbul, the largest city of Turkey that is also listed among the world's most crowded cities. The HCW treatment alternatives considered in this study include “incineration”, “steam sterilization”, “microwave” and “landfill”. The results obtained using the proposed decision approaches are analyzed in a comparative way.

The relationship between the performance of soil conditions and damage following an earthquake: a case study in Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract. Istanbul city has experienced many strong earthquakes throughout its history and suffered extensive damage. The old Istanbul (Fatih and Eminonu districts), one of the most densely populated locations of Istanbul city, is a commercial centre and has many significant historical buildings. In this study, the data pertaining to the damage sustained by historical artifacts and structures from past earthquakes, are examined along with the soil amplification of the region, the liquefaction and slope stability risk in relation to the seismic microzonation maps which were prepared using geographic information system techniques. The relationship between soil behaviour and the damage resulting from previous earthquakes. The structural damage observed in the region was in accordance with the microzonation maps. Since the area does not have a high risk in terms of slope stability, this does not have much impact on the level of damage. However, it was found that soil amplification and partial liquefaction contributed to the damage to historical artifacts and structures.

Determination of shallowS-wave attenuation by down-hole waveform deconvolution: a case study in Istanbul (Turkey)

SUMMARY The estimation of shear wave velocity and attenuation in near-surface geology is of primary importance in engineering seismology. In fact, their knowledge is essential for site response studies when preparing improved seismic hazard scenarios. In this study, we propose two approaches for estimating the average shear wave quality factor Qs by using recordings of a vertical array of accelerometers. The methods are mainly based on the deconvolution of the wavefield recorded in a borehole with that recorded at the surface. The first method requires the Fourier transform of the deconvolved wavefield to be fitted with a theoretical transfer function valid for the vertical or nearly vertical (in the case at hand up to 30 ◦ incidence angle) propagation of S waves. The second method is based on the spectral fitting of the Fourier transform of only the acausal part of the deconvolved wavefield with a theoretical transfer function. Both methods can be applied without any prior knowledge of the subsoil structure (since they are based on empirical data analysis) and do not require a precise knowledge of the azimuthal orientation of the sensors in the boreholes (which is seldom available). First, we describe the theoretical framework of the proposed methodologies for Qs estimation, which are based on the assumption that the structure in the borehole is weakly heterogeneous in the vertical direction (i.e. no large impedance contrast exists between the borehole sensor and the surface). Second, by using synthetic accelerograms, we verify that in a realistic subsoil structure, the assumption of vertical homogeneity can hold and we investigate the robustness and the suitability of the proposed methods. Finally, only the method that was shown to provide the more stable results, based on fitting the borehole-to-surface spectral ratio with a theoretical function, is applied to earthquakes signals recorded by a vertical array of accelerometers installed in Atak¨ oy (western Istanbul). Results show that using borehole data provides a fair and robust estimate of an average Qs (of about 30, 46 and 99 for the 0–50, 0–70, 0–140 m depth ranges, respectively) that can be used for numerical simulations of ground motion.

Medical waste management in Turkey: A case study of Istanbul

The objective of this study was to analyze the present status of medical waste management in the light of the Medical Waste Control Regulation (MWCR) in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey. About 17% of the hospitals, 20% of bed capacity, and 54% of private hospitals in Turkey are located in Istanbul. The first regulation about medical waste management in Turkey was published in 1993, and as a candidate state, it was changed in 2005 in accordance with EU Environmental Directives. In this work, a survey of 14 questions about the amount, collection, and temporary storage of medical wastes was applied to 192 hospitals in Istanbul through face-to-face interviews. It was found that the estimated quantity of medical waste from the hospitals is about 22tons/day and the average generation rate is 0.63kg/bed-day. Recyclable materials are collected separately at a rate of 83%. Separate collection of different types of wastes is consistently practiced, but 25% of the hospitals still use inappropriate containers for medical waste collection. Almost 77% of the hospitals use appropriate equipment for the medical waste collection personnel. The percentage of the hospitals that have temporary storage depots is 63%. Medical waste management in Istanbul is carried out by applying the MWCR.

The mitigation of the vibration effects caused by tunnel blasts in urban areas: a case study in Istanbul

Ground vibrations generated by commercial explosives in tunnel construction may cause structural damage in urban areas. Therefore, suppressing the vibration effects and mitigating the possible hazard after blasting is important. We present a new method of controlled blasting that is environmentally friendly, and easy to utilize for tunnel construction. Small charges in this method are detonated sequentially to produce minimum side effects. The efficiency of the charges may be increased based on the previously monitored shots. This method is utilized in a tunnel construction in Istanbul with five experimental shots. In these experiments, the duration and also the quantity of explosives were carefully controlled. We were able to obtain better results with short durations (480 ms) instead of long durations (9,000 ms) although the vibration levels defined as peak particle velocity (PPV) became bigger while the quantity of the explosive charge increased from 3.088 to 9.264 kg.

Sensitivity of Ground-Motion Simulations to Earthquake Source Parameters: A Case Study for Istanbul, Turkey

Following the disastrous earthquakes in Izmit and Duzce along the North Anatolian fault in 1999, the earthquake hazard in the Istanbul area became a great concern. In this study we simulate strong ground motions caused by a scenario earthquake (M 7.5) in the Marmara Sea, and investigate the effect of varying the input parameters on the broadband frequency ground motion. Simulations are based on a multiasperity source model that involves the combined rupture of the North Anatolian fault segments beneath the Marmara Sea. We use a hybrid model combin- ing a deterministic simulation of the low frequencies (0.1-1.0 Hz) with a semisto- chastic simulation of the high frequencies (1.0-10.0 Hz). Computation at each fre- quency range is performed separately and the total ground motion is combined in the time domain. Computations are linear and are performed at bedrock level, thereby not taking any effect of local geological conditions into account. We calculate a total of 17 earthquake scenarios corresponding to different source and attenuation param- eters to study their effect on the ground motion. The most significant parameters in terms of ground-shaking level are the rise time, rupture velocity, rupture initiation point, and stress drop. The largest variability of strong ground motions is observed in regions adjacent to asperities and is associated with frequencies higher than 5 Hz. For lower frequencies our simulated velocity spectra within the Istanbul area are fairly stable among scenarios. The average standard deviations of all ground-motion measures are less than 35% of the mean. Online material: Figures of peak ground acceleration and peak ground velocity and their differences to the reference scenario values.

Water Quality Retrievals from High Resolution Ikonos Multispectral Imagery: A Case Study in Istanbul, Turkey

This paper presents an application of high resolution satellite remote sensing data for mapping water quality in the Goldon Horn, Istanbul. It is an applied research emphasizing the present water quality conditions in this region for water quality parameters; secchi disc depth (SDD), chlorophyl-a (chl-a) and total suspended sediment (TSS) concentration. The study also examines the retrievals of these parameters through high resolution IKONOS multispectral data supported by in situ measurements. Image processing procedure involving radiometric correction is carried out for conversion from digital numbers (DNs) to spectral radiance to correlate water quality parameters and satellite data by using multiple regression technique. The retrieved and verified results show that the measured and estimated values of water quality parameters in good agreement (R 2 > 0.97). The spatial distribution maps are developed by using multiple regression algorithm belonging to water quality parameters. These maps present apparent spatial variations of selected parameters and inform the decision makers of water quality variations in a large water region in the Istanbul metropolitan area.

Treatment and disposal alternatives for health-care waste in developing countries – a case study in Istanbul, Turkey

Efficient health-care waste management is crucial for the prevention of the exposure of health-care workers, patients, and the community to infections, toxic wastes and injuries as well as the protection of the environment (Safe Management of Wastes from Health-care Activities. World Health Organization, Geneva). The amount of health-care waste produced in the Istanbul Metropolitan City in Turkey is 30 ton day(-1) in total. The method used for the final disposal of most of the health-care waste of Istanbul is incineration. However, a great portion of the infectious waste is disposed of with the domestic waste into the sanitary landfill because of improper segregation practices applied in the health-care institutions. Therefore the alternatives for the treatment and disposal of health-care waste were evaluated. The technical information related to the available treatment technologies including incineration, microwave irradiation, mobile or stationary sterilization, etc. were also investigated. The capital investment cost, transportation/operational costs for each alternative method and the different locations for installation were compared. When the data collected were evaluated, it was found that separate handling and disposal of health-care waste generated on the European and the Asian sides of the city was the most economic and practicable solution. As a result, it was concluded that the capacity of the Kemerburgaz-Odayeri incineration plant is enough to incinerate the health-care waste generated on the European side of Istanbul, the construction of a new incineration plant or a stationary sterilization unit for the disposal of health-care waste generated on the Asian side was the most effective alternative.

The Impact of Technology in Hotels: A Case Study of Istanbul and Ankara Hotels

The Impact of Technology in Hotels: A Case Study of Istanbul and Ankara Hotels

An assessment of environmental impacts of quarry-blasting operation: a case study in Istanbul, Turkey

This study evaluates the impacts resulting from quarry-blasting operation on nearby buildings and structures as it generates ground vibration, air blast, and fly rocks. In this paper, first blasting operation and its possible environmental effects are defined. Then the methods of blast-vibration prediction and commonly accepted criteria to prevent damage were introduced. A field experimental work was conducted to minimize the vibration effects at Saribayir quarry as it is an identical case for the many quarries situated in and around Istanbul, Turkey. Although the local surrounding geology and rock mechanics have great influence on vibrations as uncontrollable parameter, the charge weight per delay, delay period, geometric parameters of the blasts were changed to solve the existing vibration problem in the studied quarry. To obtain a realistic result, 10 blasts were carried out and 30 seismic records were made in different places mainly very close the buildings and the other vulnerable structures around the quarry. The evaluation is performed whether the vibration level are within safe limits or not. The prediction equation based on scaled distance concept is also determined, however, it is a site-specific model and need to be updated when the quarry advances. The safe blast parameters which minimize the environmental effect were determined for the Saribayir quarry.

Reasons for non-vaccination during national immunization days: a case study in Istanbul, Turkey

Objective. The member states of the 41st World Health Assembly agreed to aim for the global eradication of polio by the year 2000. Turkey adopted this goal and made substantial progress. In this report, we present the results of a coverage and risk factor survey conducted to evaluate vaccine delivery during the 1999 national immunization days (NIDs) in a large district of Istanbul, Turkey. This study provides important information regarding risk factors and reasons for non-vaccination during the NIDs, defines rumours about the NIDs, and provides estimates of vaccination coverage. Setting and participants. A survey was conducted 3–10 days after the second round of 1999 NIDs using the standard expanded programme on immunization cluster survey method, for each of 10 health centre areas in Ümraniye. In total, 2102 children were included in the analysis. Results. The vaccination coverage rate was 82.2%. Logistic regression analysis showed increased risk of non-vaccination in people who did not know the purpose of the NIDs, who had not had contact with a mobile vaccination team, who were unvaccinated in the first round of 1999 NIDs and who lived in the area of the Central Health Centre. Use of primary-level state healthcare facilities for routine childhood immunizations, and living in the area of the Adem Yavuz Health Centre had significant positive effects on vaccination. Conclusions. To achieve better results, better publicity of national campaigns using mass media, and improved use of mobile teams, are necessary.