Pre-disaster planning and preparedness for urban seismic Resilience: Evaluating critical influential factors for temporary shelter site selection

Increasing urbanization and the rising frequency of seismic events have necessitated the need for effective disaster preparedness and resilience planning; yet, existing shelter site selection methods often overlook critical influential factors (CIFs), underscoring the need for an integrative framework tailored to urban seismic resilience. This study develops a comprehensive framework for ranking and determining CIFs for the site selection of temporary shelters in the pre-disaster phase, focusing on earthquake scenarios. The framework aims to optimize resource allocation, minimize casualties, and enhance disaster resilience by addressing the complexities of decision-making in the planning, preparedness, and provisioning phases. The study integrates qualitative and quantitative methods by employing an applied, descriptive, and survey-based approach. Initially, a one-sample t-test with a 95 % confidence level was conducted to examine data significance, followed by a fuzzy VIKOR method to assess and rank influential factors (IFs) identified through an extensive literature review and expert opinions. Data were gathered using a structured questionnaire completed by 28 crisis management experts in Kerman, Iran, and the robustness of rankings against different criterion weights was assessed using a sensitivity analysis. The results highlight “distance to hospitals,” “distance to police stations,” “distance to fire stations,” and “population density” as more important CIFs. This research bridges a gap in disaster management by developing a holistic and context-specific framework for determining CIFs tailored to pre-disaster scenarios. It advances the application of multi-attribute decision-making in shelter planning, providing recommendations for policymakers to enhance earthquake disaster preparedness.