In our country, the most common meteorological natural disasters are floods, floods, hail, frost, forest fires, drought, heavy rainfall, heavy wind, lightning, avalanches, snow and storms. Due to its geological and topographical characteristics, the geography of Turkey has been a place where many earthquake origin disasters of different magnitudes have occurred. Historically, it is known that there have been very important earthquakes in and around the Marmara Sea. Exposure to such earthquakes is due to the fact that Anatolian geography has a tectonic structure where earthquake-producing live faults are located and important earthquake zones produce destructive earthquakes. Today, human impacts such as industrialisation, unplanned construction and destruction of nature may increase the effects of disasters or cause new ones to occur. While 200 natural disasters occurred 200 years ago, it is stated that this figure has reached 800 in the last century.
Disasters that are caused by human beings and have consequences that disrupt the flow of life can be defined as man-made disasters. Human-induced disasters can be encountered anywhere in the world and the effects of these disasters can be of unexpected magnitude. The magnitude of the disaster varies according to the level of precautions taken. Air pollution, ozone depletion, acid rains, nuclear, biological and chemical accidents, terrorist attacks, migrations etc. can be counted as man-made disasters. Technological disasters or, in other words, industrial disasters can be examined under human-induced disasters or they can be considered as a separate class of disasters. Although the cause of technological disasters may seem to be technological errors and deficiencies, the root cause is essentially human-induced. Technological disasters may occur as a result of accidents or intentions due to reasons such as lack of training, carelessness, failure to take adequate precautions. In this context, disaster risk management and risk assessment can be carried out more comprehensively for such disasters and better results can be obtained to reduce the severity of the risk. Technological disasters can lead to different natural disasters and natural disasters can trigger technological disasters. Accordingly, many technological disasters (explosions in industrial areas, gas leaks, radiation leaks, etc.) also occur as a result of a major earthquake.
Disaster management studies, which require a multidisciplinary approach, are appropriate to be carried out with both technical, technological and engineering and social sciences perspective. Disaster management is defined as a multifaceted and multi-actor management process that involves all segments of the society with their institutions and organisations in the activities in order to plan, direct, coordinate, support and effectively implement the measures to be taken and activities to be carried out before, during and after disasters in order to prevent disasters and reduce their damages, and ensures the use of resources in line with the determined strategic objectives and priorities. Within this process, activities which can be divided into main stages such as prevention, preparation, response and improvement require continuity. The success of the activities carried out in the previous stage of the disaster management process affects the success of the activities to be carried out in the next stage. These processes are intertwined activities and form a cycle.
Before, during and after disasters and emergencies, technical teams, especially geological, civil and environmental engineers, urban planners, are interested in minimising the possible physical destruction of the disaster and reorganising the environment after the disaster, rebuilding it safely in the same place or in another place. Reduction of disaster damages and prevention of disasters can only be possible through disaster risk management to be implemented with a multidisciplinary approach. Determination of hazards and risks, field studies, preparation of hazard and risk maps, construction of early warning systems for disasters of different origins, determination of prevention techniques and prevention structures mostly require engineering studies.
No matter how good the necessary infrastructure and resources are in order to reduce the damages caused by disasters and to make improvements, it is the qualified human resourcesthat will make these resources functional . It is important for our country to trainengineering-based scientistswho can be included in the Integrated Disaster Management system both in pre-disaster preparations and in intervention and improvement activities during and after disasters . It is important for our country to have engineering-based approach to disasters by strengthened and expanded administrations with new perspectives that can reduce the impact of natural disasters and help prevent or reduce the effects of technological / human-induced disasters and to train engineers in this field.

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