Evaluation of the resilience of nonbuilt areas to the postearthquake crisis: application to the city of Boudouaou (Northern Algeria)

To strengthen the resilience of Algerian cities subject to major hazards, this study aims to propose an evaluation of the capacity of the road network and open space (unbuilt spaces of the city) to respond to the postearthquake crisis for the evacuation and rescue of victims after a destructive earthquake.

The presented method was practiced by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the Algerian Center for Applied Research in Earthquake Engineering (CGS) for the seismic microzoning study of the city of Algiers. The criterion, “Emergency evacuation and rescue facility” was applied to the city of Boudouaou as a tool for the evaluation of the road network and open space, and the analysis used Geographic Information System (GIS) data based on experimental indices conducted in Japan.

The assessment presents vulnerability maps showing the location of urban areas of high vulnerability to accessibility for evacuation and rescue of disaster victims at the time of the earthquake. The paper offers managers the possibility of decreasing the vulnerability rate of the city by preventive remedies, such as providing refuge areas for disaster victims and widening streets to facilitate the passage of rescue workers in vulnerable areas before the arrival of the earthquake.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, being the first to present an evaluation of the road network and open space in the face of seismic risk in the region studied, the article demonstrates the importance of urban resilience in reducing human and material losses during a destructive earthquake.