Earthquake risk–sensitive model for urban land use planning

This paper outlines an optimisation model for land use planning which could be used by public officials and other stakeholders to prepare a risk-sensitive development plan fulfilling standard regulations of urban planning with an emphasis on earthquake protection. The presented model is based on a mixed integer quadratic programming method that produces an optimal land use distribution for a given urban area. A number of standard planning criteria namely land use suitability, accessibility and permeability to critical facilities and public services, land use resistance to change, provision of required land uses, as well as seismic hazard avoidance have been incorporated into the model. The performance of the model has been verified by benchmarking the generated outputs against expert-made plans for a pilot area in District 17th of the city of Tehran, Iran.