Urban Vulnerability Assessments to Climate Change for Members of the European Healthy Cities Network in Turkey: A Case Study

It is a scientific fact that climate change has important negative effects on and ecological sustainability. Especially its increasing effects on human and urban health make settlements more vulnerable. Therefore, government-level actions are important, but local governments have more important roles in climate change mitigation and adaptation. However, the lack of information on combating climate change is the biggest problem for local governments. To overcome this lack of information, action, and inclusive governance systems based on the measurement and monitoring are required. There are many tools and methods for qualitative and quantitative vulnerability assessment for cities. Indicator-Based Vulnerability Assessments are recommended in the relevant literature to assess vulnerability to urban climate impacts. This study, based on the method IBVAs, Turkey Healthy Cities Association member aims to determine the level of vulnerability of cities to climate change. When these 40 settlements/cities were analyzed by vulnerability categories, it was determined that they were distributed as High Vulnerability 0, Medium Vulnerability 5, Low Vulnerability 32, and Durability 3, respectively. It is seen that the biggest deficiencies related to the sub-parameters in the cities are in the Organizational Structures of the Cities, followed by the General Characteristics of the Cities and the Built-Environment respectively.