APPLICATION OF ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) IN EARTHQUAKE RISK ASSESSMENT

Different types of disasters, including earthquakes, are causing social, health, economic, and environmental damage worldwide. In this regard, the need for comprehensive and effective disaster and risk management becomes even more recognised, especially from public institutions. Risk management includes careful identification, analysis, and development of risk mitigation strategies, which implies planning and a certain degree of prediction of future events and their consequences. However, all risk components of earthquakes are not measurable or have a very high degree of uncertainty. Therefore, earthquake risk management activities are challenging throughout entire earthquake risk management activities. In this paper, the Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) for effective earthquake risk assessment is presented. AHP belongs to the group of multi-criteria analysis that combines quantitative and qualitative data with the aim of making decisions in defining the priorities of alternative solutions to a given problem. It is particularly suitable in cases where there is a lack of statistical data to conduct the analysis. The use of AHP is explored in the context of producing earthquake risk priority lists for a certain geographical region. A hierarchical model for risk assessment of five different counties was developed. The three main criteria that have influence on the earthquake risk are used: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability of the built environment. AHP was used to determine the priority list of counties according to these three criteria. The resulting priority list of counties can be used to produce earthquake risk maps, thus provide a useful tool for allocation of available mitigation resources.