Evaluation of Urban Resiliency in Physico-Structural Dimension of Karaj Metropolis

Cities as the most complex man-made structures have been always exposed to natural and man-made hazards; these unpredictable risks have imposed seriousimpacts on urban areas. Meanwhile Urban Resiliency is the ability of cities to respond quickly to inappropriate and unpredictable conditions, which continiues stronger than before, consistent to the new conditions. Karaj as one of the metropolises of Iran and as the nearest city to the capital, has a close connection with economy and employment of Tehran. Earthquake as the possible risk of Karaj and for being adjacent to northernground faults of Tehran, Ray and also the faults of Kahrizak, has a special importance to assess the resiliency. Thus the objective of this research is to obtain the effective indicators on Physico-Structural resiliency of Karaj and to assess them in the city divided to the regions. reviewing the literature, an in-depth interview has caused to obtain and defining the indicators. According to experts` answer to the questionnaire, the 11 indicators were found and weighted by AHP and the importance of each is determined in Physico-Structural resiliency of Karaj. After that relying on spatial-occasional framework and using Arc GIS software, each of eleven indicators are defined as a layer that reflects its status in Karaj. By overlaying the layers and applying each one`s weight in the numerical range of zero to one, the final layer of Physico-Structural resiliency of Karaj is obtained in the numerical range of one to four. The result represents 1.96 as the lowest number of resiliency and 3.94 as the highest in Karaj. Also regions 1 and 8 of the city respectively has the lowest number of Physico-Structural resiliency and regions 12 and 10 respectively has the most.