The Relationship between Turkey's Provinces' Development Levels and Social and Economic Vulnerability to Disasters

Disasters are constantly happening in the world and people suffer as a result of these disasters. The Van Earthquake and many others which have occurred in the past few years in Turkey, and disasters around the world like the South Asian Earthquake and the tsunami which followed in 2004, the earthquake in Pakistan, Hurricane Katrina and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur in 2005, the Chinese earthquake in 2009, the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes, and floods in Pakistan in 2010, and finally the Japanese Earthquake and East African drought this year have all shown the extent of the losses caused by disasters.The fact that the level of damage and losses in those disasters are not the same in each country and even in different provinces of a country, and that underdeveloped and developing countries and regions have suffered more damage, suggest the possibility that disaster vulnerability is a problem caused or exasperated by a lower level of development.The goal of this study is to examine the relationship between vulnerability and social and economic development by analyzing a region’s socioeconomic development (SED) level and social and economic vulnerability (SEV) level, and to show the direction and the power of this correlation. In literature there are studies supporting this correlation. Some of these studies claim that social and economic development adds some new dimensions to vulnerability. This study which has been done with data on Turkey’s provinces, uses four different types of analysis to see different dimensions of this correlation. The results show that SEV is partially correlated with SED, yet there are other aspects that appear to be unrelated. Thus in order to reduce future damage and make better planning, detailed vulnerability analyses have to be conducted.