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Urban Vulnerability in Bantul District, Indonesia – Towards Safer and Sustainable Development
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1  Faculty of Geography, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Published: 02 November 2011 by MDPI in The 1st World Sustainability Forum session Environmental Sustainability
Abstract: Assuring safer and sustainable development in seismic prone areas requires predictive measurements, i.e. hazard, vulnerability and risk assessment. This research aims to assess urban vulnerability due to seismic hazard and integrate it into risk based spatial plan. It highlights hazard, vulnerability and risk as constituent part of mitigation process in urbanized area. The idea of urban vulnerability assessment is to indicate current and future potential of losses due to specified hazard in given spatial and temporal unit, although it is extremely dynamic. Herein, the urban vulnerability refers to classic separation between social vulnerability assessment and physical vulnerability assessment. In mere sense, both assessment refers to pre-existing condition of being unfavorable due to seismic hazard expressed on a scale from 0 (no loss/damage) – 1 (lethal/full damage) within specified time. The research area covers six sub-districts in Bantul, Indonesia. It experienced 6.2 Mw earthquakes in May, 27th, 2006 and suffered from 5.700 death tolls, economic losses up to 3.1 billion US$ and damaged nearly 80% out of total 508 km2 area. Overall, it has experienced three major environmental issues, i.e. (1) seismic hazard, (2) rapid land conversion and (3) dominated by low income group. Based upon existing research problem, this research employs spatial multi criteria evaluation (SMCE) for social vulnerability (SMCE-SV) and for physical vulnerability (SMCE-PV). It is a method which allows diverse input criteria to explain unstructured condition such as vulnerability. There are several phases to conduct the SMCE, such as problem tree analysis, standardization, weighting and map generation. The research reveals two important findings. First, SMCE-SV and SMCE-PV are empirically feasible to indicate urban vulnerability indices. Second, integrating vulnerability assessment into risk based spatial plan requires broad dimension, from strategic, technical, substantial and procedural integration process. In summary, without adequate knowledge and political will to integrate urban vulnerability into risk based spatial plan, thus manifestation towards safe and sustainable development claimed meager and haphazard.
Keywords: vulnerability, sustainability, spatial plan, hazard, Indonesia
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