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A GIS-based multi-criteria decision-making approach

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for seismic vulnerability assessment using quantifier-
guided OWA operator: a case study of Tehran, Iran
a b c
Milad Moradi , Mahmoud Reza Delavar & Behzad Moshiri
a
Department of Surevying and Geomatic Engineering, College of Engineering, University of
Tehran, Tehran, Iran
b
Center of Excellence in Geomatic Engineering in Disaster Management, Department of
Surveying and Geomatic Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran,
Iran
c
Control and Intelligent Processing Center of Excellence, School of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
Published online: 21 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: Milad Moradi, Mahmoud Reza Delavar & Behzad Moshiri (2014): A GIS-based multi-criteria decision-
making approach for seismic vulnerability assessment using quantifier-guided OWA operator: a case study of Tehran, Iran,
Annals of GIS, DOI: 10.1080/19475683.2014.966858

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 Annals of GIS, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19475683.2014.966858

A GIS-based multi-criteria decision-making approach for seismic vulnerability assessment using

quantifier-guided OWA operator: a case study of Tehran, Iran
Milad Moradia, Mahmoud Reza Delavarb* and Behzad Moshiric
a
Department of Surevying and Geomatic Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran; bCenter of Excellence
in Geomatic Engineering in Disaster Management, Department of Surveying and Geomatic Engineering, College of Engineering,
University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran; cControl and Intelligent Processing Center of Excellence, School of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
(Received 14 May 2014; accepted 31 August 2014)
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 05:19 09 February 2015

Earthquakes are one of the most destructive disasters that cause huge damage to structures and human beings. It is not
possible to predict the exact location, duration and intensity of an earthquake; however, the probable damages may be
predicted in advance. Tehran has suffered from a number of non-standard aged buildings, a high population density and the
existence of a number of faults which have made it significantly vulnerable to the risk of earthquakes. In this research,
Tehran’s earthquake physical vulnerability map has been produced. The main contribution of this research is to take the
effect of the optimism degree into account in the problem of seismic vulnerability assessment. The ordered weighted
averaging operator is applied to provide a wide range of answers from pessimistic to optimistic solutions based on multi-
criteria analysis. The results are then compared with the granular computing and intuitionistic fuzzy (Int_Fuzzy) models that
indicate 91% and 89% similarity, respectively.
Keywords: multi-criteria decision making; GIS; OWA operator; earthquake; vulnerability assessment; Tehran

Introduction probable damages inflicted by earthquakes can be esti-

Urban areas have always been threatened by natural dis-
asters such as hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes.
Earthquake is the most damaging natural disaster in Iran
(Aghamohhamdi et al. 2013). The Iranian Plateau, which
is part of the Eurasian plate, is adjacent to the Alborz
Mountains on the north and is bounded by the Arabian
platform to the south (Berberian and Yeats 2001). The
stress caused by the convergence between the Eurasian
and Arabian plates increases the probability of fault acti-
vation in this area (Berberian and Yeats 2001). Located in
a seismically active region in Asia, Iran has a number of
earthquakes every year, some of which are large enough to
destroy a large number of houses and urban facilities and
cause huge damages to infrastructure. Ineffective human
response to earthquakes seems to be one of the main
factors aggravating these damages. Constructing buildings
with sub-standard materials, construction of towns and
cities near the major faults, overcrowded urban areas and
the lack of an effective disaster relief and management
plan are the major factors that contribute to further losses
(Chini, Pierdicca, and Emery 2009; Duzgun et al. 2011). It
is impossible to avoid earthquakes or even predict their
exact location, time, duration and intensity. However, the
mated (Rashed and Weeks 2003; Duzgun et al. 2011). In
addition, an efficient post-disaster response can be planned
based on the estimated vulnerability maps of mega cities.
Tehran which is home to approximately one quarter of the
total population of the country has three major known and
many unknown faults within its boundaries, which make it
extremely vulnerable to earthquakes (Samadi Alinia and
Delavar 2011). Earthquakes of 6.0 magnitude or larger are
expected in Tehran about every 150 years. The last large
one shook the city approximately 170 years ago, and,
therefore, experts argue that a large earthquake should be
expected in the near future (Silavi et al. 2006).
Being an ill-structured problem, urban seismic vulner-
ability assessment does not have a unique solution
(Rashed and Weeks 2003). Intensive researches have
been undertaken recently to propose a reliable solution
for this problem, all of which fall into two main categories
that include using earthquake modelling software to esti-
mate loss and using the multi-criteria decision-making
(MCDM) methods (Duzgun et al. 2011). Two examples
of software applications used for modelling earthquakes
are HAZUS and SELENA. HAZUS, developed by the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is the

*Corresponding author. Email: mdelavar@ut.ac.ir

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 2 M. Moradi et al.
most famous seismic loss estimation software. It enables
experts to estimate the extent of human, physical and
economic loss through many predefined earthquake sce-
narios (Tantala et al. 2008; Schmidtlein et al. 2011; Remo
and Pinter 2012). SELENA (SEismic Loss EstimatioN
from a logic tree Approach) is an open-source software
developed by the International Center for Geohazards,
which facilitates the seismic vulnerability assessment for
metropolitan areas (Molina, Lang, and Lindholm 2010;
Yang, Zhan, and Li 2011). Although applying loss estima-
tion software has a number of benefits including using
standard data formats and having lower levels of compu-
tational errors, the MCDM methods have the advantage of
empowering experts to assess the seismic vulnerability
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through any earthquake scenario. In addition, by using
MCDM algorithms, experts can tailor the conditions
used for the modelling to the city’s specifications (Kolat
et al. 2006; Mohanty et al. 2007; Kolat, Ulusay, and Suzen
2012). The proposed model in this research uses the
MCDM methods in order to have a better control over
parameters and results.
A number of researches have been undertaken to pro-
pose a seismic vulnerability model for the Tehran
Metropolitan Area (TMA). Aghataher, Delavar, and
Kamalian (2005) introduced some important spatial fac-
tors affecting the seismic vulnerability and proposed a
fuzzy-AHP1 model to specify layer weights through a
pairwise comparison. They assessed the physical vulner-
ability, which is the vulnerability of urban structures and
facilities to earthquakes. In addition, they determined the
most vulnerable areas of Tehran. Due to the prevalence of
various kinds of uncertainty in input data, Silavi et al.
(2006) proposed a vulnerability model based on intuitio-
nistic fuzzy logic, which takes the indeterminacy of mem-
bership functions into account, to overcome the
shortcomings of the fuzzy-AHP model. Moreover, they
evaluated the earthquake human vulnerability, which is
the mortality rate caused by an earthquake (Silavi et al.
2006). Although the recent earthquake in Tehran caused
no damage significant enough to calculate the accuracy of
the proposed model, the sensitivity of the model to input
errors could be estimated using a variety of methods.
Jahanpeyma et al. (2007) introduced an error propagation
model based on the Monte Carlo simulation which illus-
trates the effect of uncertain input data on the final seismic
vulnerability of urban areas. In order to resolve the contra-
dictions inside the classification rules, expressed by an
expert, Samadi Alinia and Delavar (2011) minimized the
entropy of rules using the granular computing (GrC)
approach. They asked the expert to classify a set of sample
statistical units. Then, they proposed a model to extract the
classification rules with minimum entropy. They used
these rules to classify all the statistical units in Tehran
urban area. Hashemi and Alesheikh (2011) used a
Geospatial Information System (GIS)-based model to
determine the street seismic vulnerability that is widely
applicable in post-earthquake route planning and mobility
management. Previous researches seem to have magnifi-
cent improvements in earthquake vulnerability assess-
ment. However, they did not take the optimism degree
into account, which is one of the most important factors in
multi-criteria decision-making. Considering different
levels of optimism, different results may be obtained. In
this research, Tehran’s seismic vulnerability map is pro-
duced based on seven different optimism degrees asso-
ciated with certain linguistic quantifiers.
Materials and methods
In order to find the best choices, most of the decision-
making problems in the GIS, such as site selection and
allocation, require the decision-maker to consider the
scores of alternatives (attribute values) in multiple dimen-
sions, which is a spatial multi-criteria decision-making
problem (Jankowski 1995; Greene et al. 2011). MCDM
seems to be the most important part of the decision sup-
port systems in GIS (Jiang and Eastman 2000). Spatial
MCDM is a process that extracts useful information
(needed in decision-making) from the attribute values of
geospatial data. Although GIS and MCDM are two sepa-
rate areas of research, they can complement each other.
GIS facilitates the visualization and management of geos-
patial data, while MCDM provides a set of algorithms in
order to help users make an informed decision (Eldrandaly
2013). By combining these two areas of research, a power-
ful tool for GIS-based MCDM is generated (Boroushaki
and Malczewski 2010). In a number of problems such as
the vulnerability assessment, there may not be real data to
extract knowledge from. Therefore, experts’ knowledge is
the only source of information for these problems.
Boolean overlay and weighted linear combination
(WLC) have frequently been used in spatial multi-criteria
decision-making. In fact, they represent two main cate-
gories of traditional solutions for a spatial MCDM pro-
blem. In the Boolean overlay method, a decision-maker
(expert) defines a threshold which is used to transform all
of the values into a zero or one set. In other words, the
Boolean overlay method uses binary maps in its decision-
making process, while WLC uses the standardized value
of the original data as well as weight vector in order to
analyse the problem and rank the alternatives (Greene
et al. 2011). In addition, in the WLC method, experts are
supposed to determine the weights of the layers (criteria),
which express the relative importance of the map layers in
comparison to each other. However, in the Boolean over-
lay method, binary map layers could be aggregated using
“AND” or “OR” operators, while a weighted average
could be used to aggregate the layers and produce an
overall map in WLC method (Al-Adamat, Diabat, and
Shatnawi 2010). Both of these two traditional methods
 Annals of GIS 3

•Determining important criteria

1

•Specifying cost and benefit layers

2

•Normalizing raw data

3

•Selecting the decision sterategy (Linguistic Quantifier)

4

•Obtaining order weights

5

•Aggregating different criteria to obtain the vulnerability degree

6
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•Classification of vulnerability degrees and producing vulnerability map

7

Figure 1. The proposed steps of vulnerability assessment based on the OWA operator.

are covered in ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator.
Therefore, OWA method is widely used in GIS-based
MCDM (Malczewski 2006, 1996). In OWA operator
when the weight vector (W) is like [0,0,…,0,1], the operator
changes into an “AND” operator and when W is in the form
of [1,0,0,…,0], an “OR” operator is created and for all other
kinds of W, the WLC method is applied. In this research,
OWA operator is applied to produce a seismic vulnerability
map through an MCDM process. The procedure of the
proposed model is illustrated in seven steps in Figure 1.
First, important criteria are specified based on experts’
opinion. Then, experts determine the criteria that have a
direct relationship with seismic vulnerability (benefit cri-
teria) and those that have an inverse relationship (cost
criteria). In this research, the attribute values are then
extracted from the 1996 census data since more recent
census data were not available. Next, order weights are
calculated based on the selected linguistic quantifier. By
aggregating the ordered attribute values using the calculated
weight vector, a relative seismic vulnerability degree is
assigned to each statistical unit. Finally, the vulnerability
degrees are classified and visualized in ArcGIS software.
In many decision-making problems, the score of
alternatives should be aggregated among different cri-
teria. Then, alternatives should be ranked based on their
aggregated score. Finding an appropriate aggregation
operator has been a challenging issue, and a number of
aggregation operators have been proposed based on dif-
ferent aspects of the decision-making problem. An aggre-
gation operator is a mapping from n-dimensional space
to a one-dimensional space, defined in Equation (1) as
(Yager 1988):
F : I n ! I; I 2 ½0; 1
where I is a number in the interval of [0,1] and In is input
vector consisting of n numbers between 0 and 1.
OWA operator
In a decision-making process, one important issue is to
determine how many criteria are going to be satisfied.
Traditionally, there are two extreme operators, AND and
OR. Yager (1988) indicated that the satisfaction of one
(OR) or all (AND) of the criteria as two very extreme
cases of the decision-making strategies is not sufficient for
a proper judgement. In some problems, satisfaction of half
of the criteria may be sufficient. Based on this idea, Yager
proposed a new family of aggregation operators that can
implicitly adjust the level of ‘ANDness’ and ‘ORness’ in
combining the alternatives scores. He entitles this new
operator as OWA operator. The OWA operator is an
aggregation operator defined in Equation (2) (Yager 1988):
X
n
F ða1 ; a2 ; . . . ; an Þ ¼ wj bj
j¼1
¼ w1 b1 þ w2 b2 þ . . . þ wn bn ; wi 2 ½0; 1
Xn
and wi ¼ 1
i¼1
(2)
where n is the number of criteria, ai is the score of
the alternative in ith criterion, bj is the jth largest element
in the input vector a, wj is weight of the jth input and F
is the aggregated score of the vector a. In a decision-
making process with m alternatives, the alternative with
(1) the largest value of F is the most preferred choice. OWA
 4 M. Moradi et al.
operator satisfies monotonicity, stability, associativity,
idempotency, identity and neutrality (Fodor, Marichal,
and Roubens 1995). In this model, F is the calculated
vulnerability degree, and statistical units are then classified
based on the aggregated value of F.
Weight vector is the original parameter of the OWA
model and also implements the decision strategy chosen
by the decision-maker (Yager, Kacprzyk, and Beliakov
2011). OWA includes a variety of operators including
maximum, minimum, weighted average and geometric
average. The optimism degree determines the act of the
operator. An optimistic decision-maker tends to choose an
alternative that has the minimum distance to the idealistic
point. However, a pessimistic decision-maker tends to
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 05:19 09 February 2015
choose the one with maximum distance from the unde-
sired state (Zarghami and Szidarovszky 2008). In
Equation (2), the weight vector is multiplied by the vector
of descending-order alternative scores. Therefore, greater
values at the beginning of the weight vector cause the
greater optimism degree (risk acceptance). Yager (1988)
defined the optimism degree as shown in Equation (3):
1 X n
OðW Þ ¼ ðn  jÞwj (3)
n  1 j¼1
where W is the weight vector and n is the number of elements
in W (number of criteria). The optimism degree (ORness) is
always between 0 and 1. O(W) = 1 results in OR (union)
operator while O(W) = 0 leads to AND (intersection) opera-
tor, and O(W) = 0.5 turns the OWA into simple weighted
average (Yager 1988). The optimism degree entirely
depends on values in weight vector. Different OWA opera-
tors have different methods of extracting the order weights,
and, therefore, have different optimism degrees.
Linguistic quantifiers
In order to define an OWA operator, a unique weight
vector should be defined. Although there are a variety of
methods to obtain order weights, they can be summarized
into three major categories including linguistic quantifiers,
maximum entropy and learning methods (Xu 2005). Yager
(1988) proposed linguistic quantifiers to specify the num-
ber of criteria that are going to be satisfied. Fullér and
Majlender (2003) introduced the minimal variation
method instead of maximum entropy that tends to mini-
mize the standard deviation of weights. Taking the advan-
tage of being similar to natural language, we use linguistic
quantifiers to calculate the weight vector. In this proce-
dure, the decision-maker could efficiently involve his/her
preferences into the model by using expressions such as
‘All’, ‘Half’ and ‘At least one’.
Although the Max and Min operators could only
satisfy ‘All’ and ‘At least one’ of the criteria, the OWA
operator is capable of satisfying a predefined number or
percentage of the criteria. This predefined number is indi-
cated by a linguistic quantifier, which is a natural language
express used by the decision-maker to specify the strategy
of decision-making. Generally, there are two kinds of
quantifiers including absolute and relative quantifiers.
Statements such as ‘At least 6’, ‘Not more than 3’,
‘Almost 4’ and ‘About 8’ are all examples of absolute
quantifiers, while relative quantifiers do not specify the
number of criteria directly and instead use expressions
such as ‘At least one’, ‘Few’, ‘Many’, ‘Some’ and ‘All’
to determine the decision strategy (Yager 1996). For
example ‘Some’ means ‘some of the criteria must be
satisfied by an acceptable alternative’, ‘All’ turns the
OWA into an AND operator and ‘At least one’ indicates
an OR operator. A linguistic quantifier, Q(r), is a number
between 0 and 1 which represents how compatible is
satisfying of r% of criteria with the expert’s point of
view. For example, if a decision-maker chooses ‘Few’ as
a quantifier, Q(0.2) = 95% means an alternative that satis-
fies 0.2 of the criteria is 95% preferable with the decision
strategy of ‘Few’. There are a number of ways to define a
linguistic quantifier. Yager (1996) proposed a family of
quantifiers known as regular increasing monotone (RIM),
using the exponential function. RIM quantifiers are
defined in Equation (4):
QðrÞ ¼ rα ; α > 0 (4)
where Q is a quantifier of the unit interval [0,1], r
represents the degree of compatibility and α is the opti-
mism degree, the only parameter of the quantifier. By
changing α, all kinds of quantifiers are built (see
Figure 2). When α tends to zero, OWA acts exactly like
a MAX operator while at the other extreme, OWA changes
1.2
1
0.8 α = 100
α=5
Q(r)
0.6 α=2
α=1
0.4 α = 0.5
α = 0.2
0.2 α = 0.01
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
r
Figure 2. Linguistic quantifiers and their corresponding opti-
mism degree.
 Annals of GIS 5

Table 1. Weight vector obtained based on each linguistic quantifier.

Decision strategy Linguistic quantifier α Weight vector (n = 6) Operator

Optimistic At least one 0.01 [1 0 0 0 0 0] Max (OR)

Few 0.2 [0.69 0.10 0.06 0.05 0.04 0.03] %
Some 0.5 [0.40 0.16 0.12 0.10 0.09 0.08] %
Neutral Half 1 [0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16] WLC
More 2 [0.02 0.08 0.13 0.19 0.24 0.30] %
Pessimistic Most 5 [0.00 0.00 0.02 0.09 0.26 0.58] %
All 100 [0 0 0 0 0 1] Min (AND)

into a MIN operator and for α = 1, the linguistic quantifier weight vectors with the same ORness measure. In order
‘half’ is built. to overcome this problem, they proposed another mea-
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 05:19 09 February 2015

Table 1 represents a number of frequently used fuzzy sure, called the dispersion (or entropy) of weight vec-
quantifiers and their corresponding α. The major function- tor. Dispersion determines the tendency of OWA
ality of linguistic quantifiers is to specify the optimism weights to take all the information (representing by
degree (ORness) in a model by determining the order the vector of attribute values) into account. The higher
weights. Yager (1988) proposed Equation (5) to obtain the entropy is, the more the aggregated value depends
the OWA weight vector using the linguistic quantifiers: on all inputs. Dispersion is introduced in Equation (8)
    (Yager 1988):
j j1
wj ¼ QRIM  QRIM ; j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n (5)
n n X
n  
H ðW Þ ¼  wj ln wj (8)
j¼1
where j is the criterion number, n is the total number
of criteria and wj is the weight of jth criterion. By employ-
ing Equations (4) and (5), order weights are calculated The dispersion measure is always in the unit interval
in Equation (6) as (Yager 1988): [0,1]. The zero value of dispersion represents a uniform
 α   weight vector while one means its intensive variation. In
j j1 α order to use all the information content in the input
wj ¼  ; j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n (6)
n n vector, dispersion of the weight vector should be max-
imized. To solve this problem, O’Hagan (1988) proposed
where α is the ORness or optimism degree. Table 1 also an optimization method as shown in Equations (9)
represents the weight vector for a decision-making pro- and (10):
blem with six criteria. Weights are derived using Equation
(6). Yager (1999) proposed Equation (7) for calculating X
n  
the optimism degree: max : H ðW Þ ¼  wj ln wj (9)
j¼1

ð1 ð1
1
OðW Þ ¼ QRIM ðrÞdr ¼ rα dr ¼ (7) subject to:
1þα
0 0

1 X n Xn

where O(W) is the optimism degree of the vector W OðW Þ ¼ ðn  jÞwj ; wj 2 ½0; 1 and wj ¼ 1
n  1 j¼1 j¼1
derived using the RIM quantifier and Equation (6) when
n (the number of criteria) tends to infinity. In this article, (10)
we calculated the weights for seven different linguistic
quantifiers to investigate the influence of the optimism O’Hagan (1988) nominated an operator whose
degree on earthquake vulnerability assessment. weights are associated with a certain optimism degree,
the maximal entropy-OWA (ME-OWA) operator. In order
to get better results and use all information content in the
Measure of dispersion input data (vector of attribute values), the dispersion of
Yager and Filev (1999) demonstrated that an ORness weight vector is maximized in this article. Table 2 indi-
measure is inadequate to represent a unique weight cates the dispersion of weight vectors derived from
vector. They proved that there may be several distinct Equation (6).
 6 M. Moradi et al.

Table 2. Weight vectors and their corresponding dispersion and ORness.

Linguistic quantifiers Weight vector Dispersion ORness

At least one [1 0 0 0 0 0] 0 1
Few [0.69 0.10 0.06 0.05 0.04 0.03] 1.03 0.83
Some [0.40 0.16 0.12 0.10 0.09 0.08] 1.32 0.68
Half [0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16] 1.64 0.5
More [0.02 0.08 0.13 0.19 0.24 0.30] 1.57 0.33
Most [0.00 0.00 0.02 0.09 0.26 0.58] 0.93 0.17
All [0 0 0 0 0 1] 0 0

Study area The most outstanding principal structure in the neigh-

In recent years, a sharp increase in the population and a bourhood of Tehran is the NTF, which begins from
rapid growth of Iran’s economy has led to a significant Lashgarak (in the east) and ends in Kan (in the west)
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 05:19 09 February 2015

growth of Tehran. As a result, in the last two decades,
Tehran has attracted special attention as the hub for Iran’s
educational, industrial and financial activities (Tayyebi,
Pijanowski, and Tayyebi 2011). More than 10 million peo-
ple live in Tehran, most of whom reside in the southern part
of the city, where most of the buildings are aged and non-
standard. Moreover, Tehran has not had a large earthquake
since 1830. As a result, a future earthquake may be very
destructive (Hashemi and Alesheikh 2011). Seismologists
investigating earthquakes in Tehran believe that a probable
earthquake would be in the magnitude range of 6.2–7.3
(Modified Mercalli Intensity) (Hamzehloo, Vaccari, and
Panza 2007). Tehran is surrounded by three major faults
(Figure 3) including Mosha Fault, North Tehran Fault
(NTF) and North Rey Fault (Ritz et al. 2003; Solaymani
Azad, Ritz, and Abbassi 2011).
(Figure 3). It can be considered as a small section of a
collection of blocks that is located in the NE–SW thrust of
Alborz. Having a length of approximately over 35 km, the
fault at its eastern end is connected to the Mosha Fault
(Tchalenko 1975).
Contributing criteria
A large number of contributing criteria are introduced in
seismic loss estimation models. Table 3 illustrates 14
factors (four main groups of criteria) applied in previous
seismic loss estimation models. In the current research,
due to limited accessibility to data, only six criteria are
included into the model.
The age of a building is one of the most important
criteria that make it vulnerable against earthquake (Silavi

Figure 3. Major faults around TMA.

 Annals of GIS 7

Table 3. Contributing factors in seismic vulnerability assessment.

ID Type of factor Factor Reference

1 Structure Height of the buildings Samadi Alinia and Delavar (2011)

2 Number of floors Aghataher, Delavar, and Kamalian (2005)
3 Construction materials Molina, Lang, and Lindholm (2010)
4 Structure quality Panahi, Rezaie, and Meshkani (2014)
5 Seismic Resonance Coefficient of buildings Anbazhagan et al. (2010)
6 Adjacent Distance to flammable facilities Panahi, Rezaie, and Meshkani (2014)
7 Distance to active faults Samadi Alinia and Delavar (2011)
8 Percentage of old population Walker et al. (2014)
9 Population Percentage of dependent population Rashed and Weeks (2003)
10 Percentage of uneducated population Aghamohammadi et al. (2013)
11 Other Soil liquefaction Hashemi and Alesheikh (2011)
12 Peak ground acceleration Hashemi and Alesheikh (2011)
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13 Slope Walker et al. (2014)

14 Soil type Molina, Lang, and Lindholm (2010)

et al. 2006). Considering that the first building code in Iran
was implemented in 1966, buildings constructed before
this period have been considered as non-standard build-
ings in this research. The first standard code for strength-
ening buildings against earthquakes came into effect in
1988. Therefore, the proportion of the buildings built
between 1966 and 1988 has been added to the model as
an important factor.
In addition, the quality of materials is noticeably
important. The height of a building is the third effective
factor (Jahanpeyma et al. 2007). Faults are the main
source of earthquakes, and destruction is related to the
distance from active faults (Hashemi and Alesheikh
2011). This article assumes that the NTF has been acti-
vated and has caused an earthquake. Slope can also be
mentioned as another effective criterion (Aghataher,
Delavar, and Kamalian 2005). In this article, due to
limited access to updated data, the 1996 census data are
used. Table 4 illustrates the data used in this article. All
the data, obtained from Iranian National Statistical
Center, is in the format of Environmental Systems
Research Institute shape file and have WGS-1984 as
Table 4. Important criteria used in this model.
Criterion Definition Type
Slope Average slope of each statistical unit Benefit
Bld_Less4 Percentage of buildings having less Cost
than four floors
Bld_More4 Percentage of buildings having four Benefit
floors and more
Bld_Bef66 Percentage of buildings built before Benefit
1966
Bld_Bet66_88 Percentage of buildings built Benefit
between 1966 and 1988
Dist_Fault Geometric distance of statistical Cost
units to North Tehran Fault
their datum. The study area is located in the UTM
Zone 39 N. Attribute values of 10 sample statistical
units which are randomly selected are showed in Table 5.
Normalization of attribute values
A number of MCDM algorithms like OWA need the entire
attribute values to be in a comparable scale. Without this
condition, aggregation of different criteria is impossible
because they may be in different units and have different
ranges. Normalization is a procedure that transforms all
the scores in different criteria into the interval of [0–1].
One of the most common techniques of normalization is
maximum score. Based on this method, all of the scores in
a certain criterion should be divided by the maximum of
that criterion. Therefore, normalized values are calculated
using Equation (11) (Malczewski 1999):
ai
a0i ¼ (11)
amax
where ai is the ith great value between all the scores in the
criterion, amax is the maximum value of the criterion and ai′
is the normalized value (Malczewski 1999). Although max-
imum score is extremely useful for the benefit criteria,
which are desired to be larger, in the case of the cost criteria,
which should be minimized, this method is not sufficient
(Malczewski 1999). In order to normalize the cost criteria,
Equation (12) have been used (Malczewski 1999):
ai
a0i ¼ 1  (12)
amax
where ai′ is the normalized value of the cost criterion, ai is
ith great value among all alternatives and amax is the
maximum score in a certain criterion. Table 6 shows the
normalized attribute values of the 10 sample units. In the
 8 M. Moradi et al.

Table 5. Attribute values for 10 randomly selected statistical units in 1996 census.

ID Slope (%) Bld_Less4 (%) Bld_More4 (%) Bld_Bef66 (%) Bld_Bet66_88 (%) Dist_Fault (km)

776 14 17 8 52 13 6.751
894 1 4 0 84 6 3.890
186 26 2 0 91 19 1.435
666 4 88 0 97 0 5.476
522 6.62 9 1 63 5 2.054
233 17.66 46 10 84 24 1.947
1474 1 36 10 75 0 6.210
2518 0 86 36 60 0 16.735
2190 0 37 5 82 0 10.225
3146 0 96 20 54 2 22.885
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Table 6. Normalized attribute values for the 10 randomly selected statistical units.

ID Slope Bld_Less4 Bld_More4 Bld_Bef66 Bld_Bet66-88 Dist_Fault

776 0.53 0.17 0.22 0.53 0.54 0.71

894 0.03 0.04 0 0.86 0.25 0.84
186 1 0.02 0 0.93 0.79 0.94
666 0.15 0.91 0 1 0 0.77
522 0.25 0.09 0.02 0.64 0.20 0.92
233 0.67 0.47 0.27 0.86 1 0.92
1474 0.03 0.37 0.27 0.77 0 0.73
2518 0 0.89 1 0.61 0 0.27
2190 0 0.38 0.13 0.84 0 0.56
3146 0 1 0.55 0.55 0.083 0

seismic vulnerability assessment problem, in order to find
the vulnerable areas, slope, percentage of weak buildings
with less than four floors, percentage of buildings that
have four floors and more, percentage of buildings built
before 1966 and percentage of buildings built between
1966 and 1988 are the benefit criteria. However, the dis-
tance of a building to the NTF is considered as a cost
criterion.
Results and discussion
Figure 4 illustrates seven different solutions for the seis-
mic vulnerability assessment problem based on the differ-
ent decision strategies employed. Optimistic strategies
result in a higher vulnerability degree in comparison to
pessimistic ones, because optimistic quantifiers tend to
assign higher weights to higher attribute values and vice
versa. Consequently, the number of units classified in
‘Very Vulnerable’ and ‘Vulnerable’ classes is increasing
in optimistic decision strategies. However, in the pessi-
mistic decision strategies, most of the units are classified
in ‘Very Low Vulnerable’ and ‘Low Vulnerable’ classes.
Table 7 illustrates the vulnerability degree of the 10 sta-
tistical units obtained by multiplying the weight vectors by
descending-order vector of the attribute values.
Using the quantifier ‘At least one’ means that an
extremely optimistic decision strategy is expected. This
quantifier needs at least one of the criteria to be satisfied,
which is equal to ‘OR’ operator. The weight vector
w1 = [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0] is obtained based on the quantifier
‘At least one’ (see Table 2). Multiplying this weight vector
by descending-order vector of the input criteria results in
the maximum attribute value. Therefore, the combined
value (vulnerability degree) and maximum attribute value
will be the same. Under this strategy, 2200 statistical units
out of 3175 units have been classified in ‘Very Vulnerable’
class and only 151 statistical units are considered to be
‘Very Low Vulnerable’ in the case of NTF activation. In
addition, the impact of distance to NTF is very noticeable
here and causes approximately all of the northern statis-
tical units to be classified as ‘Very Vulnerable’ (Figure 4).
Using the quantifiers ‘Few’ and ‘Some’, an optimistic
decision about the seismic vulnerability problem has been
made. Based on these quantifiers, higher weights are
assigned to the higher attribute values and vice versa.
Therefore, it leads to a combined value near the maximum
value. The weight vectors w2 = [0.69 0.10 0.06 0.05 0.04
0.03] and w3 = [0.40 0.16 0.12 0.10 0.09 0.08] are
obtained using ‘Few’ and ‘Some’ quantifiers, respectively
(Table 2). Although 44% of the total units still correspond
to the ‘Very Vulnerable’ class, the number of units in
‘Very Low Vulnerable’ class increased by 304 to 455
using the quantifier ‘Few’. ‘Some’ is a more pessimistic
quantifier than ‘Few’ so that the results of ‘Few’ are more
 Annals of GIS 9
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Figure 4. Seven different Tehran’s seismic vulnerability maps based on the different quantifiers using OWA operator.
 10 M. Moradi et al.

Table 7. Aggregated seismic vulnerability degrees for the 10 selected statistical units based on the seven different decision strategies.

ID At least one Few Some Half Many Most All

776 89.7 79.2 57.3 37.6 22.0 9.7 0.50

894 91.8 81.5 57.8 37.7 22.4 10.8 0.52
186 96.9 80.6 55.8 36.5 21.8 11.2 1.55
666 85.0 79.6 60.4 40.29 23.6 10.5 0.56
522 81.3 68.6 49.2 32.7 19.6 9.3 1.44
233 92.6 79.9 63.4 46.9 31.5 17.8 6.65
1474 87 70.4 46.4 29.1 16.6 7.3 0.38
2518 95.0 82.2 58.3 37.8 21.9 9.6 0.51
2190 94.0 80.7 57.5 37.1 21.3 9.38 0.49
3146 89.4 71.7 50.9 32.5 18.9 8.3 0.44

similar to the ‘Max’ operator, while the vulnerability versa. Under the strategy of ‘More’, over 85% of units are
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 05:19 09 February 2015

degree obtained by ‘Some’ is more comparable to WLC.
Moreover, the impact of distance to NTF decreased in
comparison to ‘At least one’, and some of the northern
statistical units are not considered to be‘ Very Vulnerable’
anymore (see Figure 4).
The quantifier ‘Half’ is a neutral quantifier and corre-
sponds to a strategy that 50% of the criteria should be
satisfied by an acceptable alternative. Based on this quan-
tifier, equal weights are assigned to the high and low
attribute values. Therefore, w4 = [0.16 0.16 0.16 0.16
0.16 0.16] should be multiplied by the descending vector
of the input attribute values. In this strategy, the combined
value does not tend to be extremely high or extremely low.
Consequently, most of the statistical units are classified in
‘Moderate’ class (see Figure 5).
‘More’ and ‘Most’ are quantifiers that solve the pro-
blem with 33% and 17% of optimism degree, respectively
(see Table 2). They are pessimistic quantifiers that provide
a range of answers which fall between ‘AND’ and ‘WLC’.
Using Equation (6), w5 = [0.02 0.08 0.13 0.19 0.24 0.30]
for ‘More’ and w6 = [0.00 0.00 0.02 0.09 0.26 0.58] for
‘Most’ quantifiers are obtained. Both quantifiers tend to
assign higher weights to lower attribute values and vice
classified in ‘Vulnerable’, ‘Moderate’ and ‘Low
Vulnerable’ classes, while based on ‘Most’ quantifier,
only 53% of the total statistical units are classified in
these classes. Therefore, the ‘Most’ quantifier has a ten-
dency to provide more extreme results than ‘More’ (see
Figure 4).
When the expert wants all of the criteria to be satisfied
by an acceptable result, ‘All’ should be chosen as a lin-
guistic quantifier. Therefore, the quantifier ‘All’ corre-
sponds to the ‘AND’ operator. The weight vector
w7 = [0 0 0 0 0 1] is calculated using Equation (6)
which means that the weight of all attribute values is
zero except the minimum one. The number of units in
‘Very Low Vulnerable’ class increased by 824 to 2181 so
that over 68% of total units are in this class (see Figure 5).
In addition, the impact of distance to NTF increased and
caused almost all of the southern statistical units, which
have a relatively large distance to NTF, to be assumed as
‘Very Low Vulnerable’ units (see Figure 4).
Figure 5 illustrates the results achieved from this
research in addition to those presented by Samadi Alinia
and Delavar (2011) using GrC. Most of the urban statis-
tical units in this method are classified in ‘Moderate’ class

2500
Number of Statistical Units

2000
1500
1000
500
0
At Least Granular
Few Some Half Many Most All
One Computing
Very Low Vulnerable 151 455 90 327 559 1357 2181 280
Low Vulnerable 178 118 442 758 968 767 174 489
Moderate 219 459 889 1012 997 747 557 1023
Vulnerable 427 726 1263 897 367 180 160 834
Very Vulnerable 2200 1417 491 181 284 124 103 547

Figure 5. Number of statistical units in each class based on the different quantifiers using OWA.
 Annals of GIS 11

which means an approximately neutral approach was
applied. The number of statistical units classified in
‘Vulnerable’ and ‘Low Vulnerable’ classes is 834 and
489, respectively, and nearly 18% of statistical units are
‘Very Vulnerable’ according to this model. In addition,
GrC is generally less sensitive to distance to NTF in
comparison to the OWA operator.
One of the most important issues in MCDM is valida-
tion of the model. Validation indicates the extent to which
the model is simulating the real-world conditions. In order
to validate an MCDM model, the results should be com-
pared with the real-world evidence. However, the last
large earthquake occurred in TMA struck the city in
1830 (Hashemi and Alesheikh 2011). Therefore, valida-
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similar vulnerability pattern is used in both methods.
Moreover, the behaviour of neutral quantifiers such as
‘Half’, ‘Some’ and ‘Many’ is better confirmed by the
GrC results in comparison to very optimistic and very
pessimistic quantifiers. The comparison between OWA
and Int_Fuzzy indicates that the similarity between the
two methods reaches 0.89% for ‘Half’ and has its mini-
mum in 0.59% for ‘At least one’. It shows that a neutral
strategy is applied in the Int_Fuzzy model.
This article proposed an urban earthquake physical
vulnerability assessment model based on the OWA opera-
tor that provides a wide range of answers. In addition,
linguistic quantifiers are used to implement different deci-
sion strategies based on different optimism degrees.

tion is applicable only through the comparison of results
with the other MCDM models. In this article, Spearman
correlation coefficient (r) is applied to measure the asso-
ciation between vulnerability degrees obtained for each
statistical unit based on GrC, Int_Fuzzy and OWA.
Spearman correlation coefficient is calculated using
Equation (13) (Zar 1972):
"
P #
6  Ni¼1 D2i
r ¼1
N  ð N 2  1Þ
where Di is the difference between vulnerability degrees in
the first method and the second one for the ith statistical
unit and N is the total number of statistical units in TMA.
The value of Spearman correlation coefficient r ranges
from −1.00 to +1.00. The positive values indicate a direct
correlation between the results of the two MCDM meth-
ods, while negative values mean that there is an inverse
relationship between the results. The zero value of the
Spearman correlation coefficient shows that there is no
correlation between the results of two MCDM methods.
Table 8 indicates the Spearman correlation coefficient
values (r) between linguistic quantifiers, GrC and
Int_Fuzzy. It can be concluded from Table 8 that the
OWA operator using quantifier ‘Some’ has the maximum
likeness to GrC method (r = 0.91). In addition, the mini-
mum value of Spearman correlation coefficient between
GrC and linguistic quantifiers is 0.67 which ensures that a
Initially, the most important criteria affecting the seismic
vulnerability degree are identified. Then, a set of seismic
vulnerability degrees are obtained using seven linguistic
quantifiers by aggregating the attribute values of the six
important criteria.
The most outstanding advantages of the proposed
model are as follows:
(1) Including the optimism degree as a key factor into
(13)
the decision process. An optimistic decision-
maker tends to choose an alternative which has
the shortest distance to the ideal solution.
However, the alternative with largest distance to
negative ideal solution is the most preferable one
for a pessimistic decision-maker. This article used
the OWA model in order to provide five distinct
decision strategies for Tehran’s seismic vulnerabil-
ity assessment between these two extreme cases.
(2) Integrating the OWA operator with linguistic
quantifiers. There are a variety of methods to
obtain order weights: (1) minimum variation and
maximum dispersion, which have a tendency to
maximize the trade-off between the criteria, in
order to involve all of the criteria equally (Wang
and Parkan 2005); (2) using linguistic quantifiers
to describe the expert’s opinion on ‘how many
criteria should be satisfied by the most preferable
alternative’. The most prominent superiority of

Table 8. The Spearman correlation coefficient values for linguistic quantifiers, GrC and Int_Fuzzy.

Method At Least One Few Some Half Many Most All GrC Int_Fuzzy

At Least One 1.00 0.86 0.82 0.78 0.62 0.57 0.49 0.70 0.59
Few 0.86 1.00 0.88 0.81 0.65 0.61 0.52 0.78 0.65
Some 0.82 0.88 1.00 0.83 0.73 0.67 0.62 0.91 0.77
Half 0.78 0.81 0.83 1.00 0.85 0.83 0.80 0.86 0.89
Many 0.62 0.65 0.73 0.85 1.00 0.90 0.83 0.79 0.84
Most 0.57 0.61 0.67 0.83 0.90 1.00 0.85 0.73 0.79
All 0.49 0.52 0.62 0.80 0.83 0.85 1.00 0.67 0.71
GrC 0.70 0.78 0.91 0.86 0.79 0.73 0.67 1.00 0.86
Int_Fuzzy 0.59 0.65 0.77 0.89 0.84 0.79 0.71 0.86 1.00
 12 M. Moradi et al.
this method is the similarity of linguistic quanti-
fiers to conversation language. Therefore, the
experts could easily specify their preferences with-
out using numbers and equations.
(3) Normalization of the attribute values. A number of
MCDM algorithms use normalized values of the
criteria, while others use the original value.
Normalization makes the attribute values with dif-
ferent units comparable with each other.
On the other hand, the major limitations of the pro-
posed model are:
(1) Lack of up-to-date data. One of the most impor-
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tant issues in the case of spatial MCDM is the
availability of up-to-date data. Data used in this
article are related to a census taken in 1996.
Consequently, the model represents the vulnerabil-
ity degree of approximately 18 years ago.
(2) Neglecting the interrelation between faults. There
are at least three main known faults around
Tehran. However, in the current research, it is
assumed that the earthquake was caused by the
activation of NTF only. In other words, the activa-
tion of one fault has a complicated impact on the
other faults, which has been neglected here.
Conclusion
This article indicates the applicability of the quantifier-
guided OWA operator in earthquake physical vulnerability
assessment in TMA. Linguistic quantifiers are used in
order to enable disaster management experts to apply
any decision strategy by selecting the appropriate quanti-
fier. In addition, this model is able to include both quali-
tative and quantitative information about decision strategy
into the model by using linguistic quantifiers, which are
powerful means of human–computer interaction. In other
words, the model proposed in this research specified the
earthquake vulnerability regarding the optimism degree.
Six important criteria are included in this model, which
cover five benefit criteria: (1) average slope of each sta-
tistical unit; (2) percentage of buildings having less than
four floors; (3) percentage of buildings having four floors
and more; (4) percentage of buildings built before 1966;
(5) percentage of buildings built between 1966 and 1988;
and one cost criterion: the distance of statistical units to
NTF. Then, the weight vectors of these six attribute values
were obtained based on the selected quantifiers.
Integrating the attribute values using these weight vectors
led to a seismic vulnerability degree of each statistical
unit. Then, the vulnerability degrees obtained by this
method were classified in five classes using ‘Equal
Intervals’ in ArcGIS software.
The results demonstrate that a large number of north
Tehran statistical units and a few southern ones are very
vulnerable based on approximately all decision strategies.
Moreover, using these results in urban planning, especially
in urban development and after earthquake search and
rescue planning, could facilitate sustainable development
from an urban disaster management perspective, which is
substantially necessary in smart mega city growth and
management.
In addition, the comparison of the results with those of
GrC and Int_Fuzzy model using Spearman correlation
coefficient indicates that the vulnerability degrees obtained
from neutral quantifiers are extremely certified with the
two models. However, ‘All’ and ‘At least one’ quantifiers
have only 67% and 70% similarities to the GrC and 0.71%
and 0.59% similarities to the Int_Fuzzy model,
respectively.
Although the proposed model provides promising
results which address a number of concerns to some
extent, new issues in disaster management necessitate
further research. Future works may include a number of
issues as follows:
(1) Group decision-making. Different experts not only
have different ideas about the same topic, but they
also may be wrong in some cases. Using more
than one expert in decision-making may provide
more accurate results and better which ensures the
reliability of the decision strategy. Some exten-
sions of the OWA operator such as intuitionistic
fuzzy OWA (Su et al. 2012) and density-induced
OWA (Ma and Guo 2011) can be employed to
enable group decision-making.
(2) Adding a number of layers such as streets, gas
stations and aqueducts. Data layers used in this
study were limited due to data availability.
Future researches may improve this model by
including more data layers indicating the loca-
tion of flammable structures and the transporta-
tion network.
(3) Investigating earthquake human vulnerability.
Human seismic vulnerability is as critical as phy-
sical seismic vulnerability. If an earthquake hap-
pens at night, more losses would occur in
residential areas, while fewer fatalities would
occur in commercial and industrial ones.
Therefore, human seismic vulnerability plays a
key role in earthquake search and rescue opera-
tions and precise information about human vulner-
ability improves the efficiency of finding injured
people. This article only proposed earthquake phy-
sical vulnerability regarding the optimism degree.
Including optimism degree in human vulnerability
could be the subject of future studies.
 Annals of GIS
Finally, by applying natural language terms, this model
improves the efficiency of the previous models in the
case of including experts’ opinion in mathematical
computations. Besides, this model could be applied in
other areas of disaster management, such as flood
and tsunami vulnerability assessment, with partial
modification.
Funding
This work was supported by Deputy for Research, College
of Engineering, University of Tehran [grant number 42/6/
8103002].
Downloaded by [Chinese University of Hong Kong] at 05:19 09 February 2015
Note
1. Analytical hierarchy process.
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