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The construction industry in many developing countries is considered the main engine for economic growth. Quantification of the resilience of the construction industry in developing economies is essential for stakeholders and decision makers. Many researchers have attempted to quantify the construction industry's resilience in the context of developed economies; however, there is lack of established measures of such quantification in developing countries. This paper proposes a framework for the composition of an index that quantifies the resilience of the construction industry in developing countries. The proposed framework is demonstrated in the context of three developing countries: Rwanda, Egypt, and Turkey. The index is composed of measures such as the construction value added to a country's gross domestic product (GDP) and employment in construction. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is utilized for weighting and aggregation of the individual variables. Studying the causal relationship between construction growth and economic development from 1971 to 2022, results show that construction growth leads to economic development in each of the three countries. Results of the proposed index values indicate that the construction industry in each of the three countries demonstrated increased resilience by sustaining both its outputs and its employment generation aspect in the two years following the coronavirus pandemic in 2019. Quantification of the construction industry's resilience in countries where the construction growth leads to the economic growth would provide a crucial insight for stakeholders and decision makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new realm in spatial planning defies administrative boundaries and adopts larger territories than cities, which encompasses city clusters where cities can both compete and cooperate rather than compete as individual entities. In that regard, various approaches to the delineation of functional regions and "mega" regions have been proposed in time, based on population and employment, the urban landscape, or the interactions between regions in terms of intracity travel or migration flows. This paper proposes a methodology to delineate functional regions as well as megaregions based on the pattern of intercity freight flows and a composite economic indicator, exemplified by a case study of Turkey. A four-step delineation method is proposed in which population and trips are used initially to rank the cities and their hinterlands. Second, hierarchical clustering is carried out to delineate new clusters based on flows, and the resulting clusters are used to delineate functional regions for regional planning purposes. Third, a composite economic indicator (income and wealth index, IWI) is employed to refine and finalize the boundaries, thus ensuring the functional zones' homogeneity as economic clusters. In the last step, megaregions are pinpointed based on the cities of the functional regions using two criteria: IWI (≥0.4089) and GDP (TRY ≥18.3 million) in 2015. The defined regions represent a new geographical scale in regional planning that can aid the central government in addressing leading regional issues: for example, prioritizing governmental investments that are subsidized by national funds aimed at the alleviation of regional inequalities. A future study may focus on the effect of regional economic inequalities on internal migration flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, one of the most important urban planning and architectural projects of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's national program was the establishment and development of a new capital city called Ankara. During these formative years, Ankara underwent a major program of architectural urbanism and modernism that visually set the young republic apart from its recent Ottoman past. This paper will attempt to examine historical precedents in capital city planning via a cross-country analysis to that of Ankara; however, it will also highlight the extant literature and contribute to the argument that Ankara provides a unique experience in modernism, urbanism, and especially nation-building in the 20th century. Although Turkey's political and national direction has taken a new course in the early 21st century, the Kemalist strategy in communicating national identity and nation-building continues to be emulated and communicated in state-sponsored architecture in Ankara. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Turkey, which is a country with rapid population growth, has a housing problem with low-income groups, that particularly emerged due to urbanization. Different solutions have been used in an attempt to solve this problem, within the scope of social housing policies that the local or central governments have produced. However, social housing policies have been insufficient to solve the rapidly changing housing problem due to the social, political, and economic dynamics of Turkey. Some social housing policies have succeeded; however, some have accelerated the formation of illegal settlements. Although the most important component of this multidimensional process is generally the government, actors, such as users, architects, and construction companies, whose expectations and effects are different from each other are the components of the process. It is uncommon for the user to have a say in the design, or production, or both of a house. This is true for Turkey and many countries worldwide. This paper aims to achieve a centralized view of the production of housing for low-income groups in Turkey, which is quite complicated and problematic; and to draw attention to the potential of user participation that has not previously had a place in this process and to open the issue to discussion. First, a literature review will be conducted that focuses on discourses in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where user participation in low-cost housing production was on the agenda. Later, to revise the existing large framework in the context of Turkey, social housing policies that were developed by the governments to solve the housing demands of low-income groups will be briefly reviewed. Finally, the effect of user participation in the process of social housing for low-income groups in Turkey will be discussed through the best practices believed to be from three practical experiments. The aim is to raise awareness about user participation in low-cost housing production in Turkey which is not currently on the agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drought forecasting is a critical aspect of water resource management, where droughts have substantial economic and environmental impacts. This study employs a Monte Carlo–based approach, complemented by statistical distribution fitting and trend analysis, to forecast future streamflows on long-narrow type drainage basins. Therefore, the Kızılırmak River Basin in Turkey, which is a long and narrow type, has been selected to test the suggested method. Historical data are used to determine the best-fitting distributions, ensuring reliability in the selection of future streamflow scenarios also using trend analysis. The study reveals valuable insights into potential drought occurrences over the next 25 years, aiding decision makers in implementing water management strategies. Based on the analysis results, it is expected that the drought frequency is increased up to 64.7%. Drought severity is classified into different categories, offering an understanding of drought characteristics. The findings contribute to effective water resource planning by aiming the assessment of future hydrological droughts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last 30 years, there have been various findings related to the effects of construction investments––especially housing investments––on the economic development of urban areas. However, the impact of public housing investments on economic development in rapidly and dynamically developing countries with high housing demand has not been sufficiently discussed. This article presents an examination of the impact of housing production as a public housing investment on the economic development of provinces at the macro level through the case of Turkey. In the study, we analyzed the impact of public housing investments on the economic development of the provinces in Turkey between 2004 and 2018. Since 2004, Turkey has pursued a policy of increasing public housing investments, and for this purpose, the structure of the Toplu Konut İdaresi Başkanlığı (TOKI––the Mass Housing Authority), which is a strong and autonomous centralized public institution, has changed. Despite the increase in public housing investment at the country level as a result of this policy, the effect of public housing investment on economic growth at the provincial level has not been determined. In this study, panel data analysis methods were applied, regression analyses were conducted, and the findings were evaluated. The findings of the analyses showed that, although housing investments (private sector) have had an impact on the development of the provinces at the macro level, public housing investment and production have not played a decisive role in the economic development of the provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current national occupational safety and health (OSH) initiatives follow reactive approaches, i.e., if it breaks, fix it. Existing accounts, however, failed to improve national OSH performances substantially, which imposes the need for an in-depth and proactive (fix it so it will not break) investigation of national occupational fatality risks. Despite many studies examining the fatality risk of workers based on project-, company-, and/or behavior-related factors, the role of national conditions on the countrywide fatality risk of workers has not been explored. The present research leverages the national statistics of Turkey to examine their influence on construction workers' fatality risk through a machine learning–based prediction model. Several widely used machine learning methods were adopted for determining whether the upcoming month poses a significant fatality risk for construction workers or not based on national statistics of the previous month. According to analysis results, the gradient boosting decision tree algorithm yielded the highest prediction performance in terms of f1-score. The recently developed game theory–based Shapley Additive Explanations (SHAP) algorithm was used to identify whether and how national conditions affect countrywide fatality risk of construction workers. Findings illustrate that the share of the construction sector in employment, market demand, and labor shortage are the most significant national factors in determining the fatality risk. SHAP summary and SHAP dependence plots are further presented to provide decision makers with a clearer understanding of hidden relationships between fatality risk and national conditions. In addition, a framework that can be practically used by policy makers and governmental authorities is developed to help minimize national occupational fatality risk. Overall, predicting national fatality risk in the industry and identifying the national precursors of occupational fatalities contribute to the development of macrolevel safety improvements based on country-specific conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupational accidents are frequent in the construction industry, containing significant risks in the working environment. Therefore, early designation, taking preventive actions, and developing a proactive safety risk management plan are of paramount significance in managing safety issues in the construction industry. This study aims to develop a national data-driven safety management framework based on accident outcome prediction, which helps anatomize precursors of fatalities and thereby minimizing fatal accidents on construction sites. A national data set comprising 338,173 occupational accidents recorded in the construction industry across Turkey was used to develop a data-driven model. The random forest algorithm coupled with particle swarm optimization was used for the prediction and the interpretability of the proposed model was augmented through the game theory–based Shapley additive explanations (SHAP) approach. The findings showed that the proposed algorithm achieved satisfactory model performances for detecting construction workers who might face a fatality risk. The SHAP analysis results indicated that both company (such as number of past accidents and workers in the company) and worker-related (such as age, daily wage, experience, shift, and past accident of the workers) attributes were influential in identifying fatalities by detecting which workers might face fatal accidents under which conditions. A construction safety management plan was developed based on the analysis results, which can be used on construction sites to detect workers/conditions that are most susceptible to fatalities. The findings of the present research are expected to contribute to orchestrating effective safety management practices in construction sites by characterizing the root causes of severe accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Limiting individual transportation and increasing the share of public transportation has an important place in planning a sustainable transportation system in the urban environments of today. The most important goals for city governments include the ability to attract automobile users to public transportation. At this stage, there is a need for a public transportation system that aims to optimize the criteria of cost, safety, organization, and comfort. It is highly important to measure, assess, and improve the satisfaction of those who use public transportation for sustainable transportation. This study used an integrated quality function deployment (QFD) and multichoice goal programming approach to assess the satisfaction of people who use public transportation and to improve the transportation systems quality. The proposed approach was implemented for the tram system that is currently operational in Eskişehir in Turkey. According to the results that were obtained, with a low cost, it was seen that customer priorities could be met to a great extent as 93.1%. The results of the study are helpful for the decision makers to develop incentive policies regarding public transportation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of housing clusters have emerged because of the reconstitution of Turkish metropolitan municipalities, supported by the arrangements made in land development plans. Turkish metropolitans are determined by the administrative borders, while the world metropolitans are determined by their functional urban areas. Here, we aimed to evaluate the clustering capacity of metropolitan municipalities by focusing on the distribution of the residential occupation permits. Exploratory spatial data analysis was used to determine the core provinces of housing. The Moran Index was used to investigate the increase of clusters and this was cross-checked with the Spatial Lag results. We improved the recent land-use changes from rural plots to urban service parcels over the presence of the land development plans, including the transactions. Across the limited period studied, grifted patterns appeared. Clustering provinces enhanced the detection of construction that boosted urban development. Furthermore, a meshwork was revealed. In most developing countries, finding diverse and not tempered data sets in official sources is still a big problem. Moreover, open-data sources were limited in this study. In the search to prove uncontrolled urban growth fueled by construction activities, our research established an alternative way to read the metropolitan area network using occupancy permits, where the lack of data cannot be compensated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in precipitation and flow regimes may cause more catastrophic floods in the future. This study examines the trends in a subbasin of Bartin Stream in the Western Black Sea Basin, Turkey, and questions the influence of non-stationarity by performing flood frequency analyses on one stationary and nine non-stationary models by incorporating the covariates of time and annual precipitation as a linear function of their location and scale parameters. In this context, variabilities in annual precipitation, (AP), mean annual flow (MAF), and maximum daily flow (MDF), of five precipitation gauging stations and four streamflow gauging stations were examined using the Mann-Kendall and modified Mann-Kendall tests, and Sen's slope estimator. The breakpoints were identified in the series by employing homogeneity tests, and the relative changes before and after the shifts were analyzed. The modified Mann-Kendall showed a significantly increasing trend at Bartin precipitation station, with an increase of 0.69 mm/year , and significant decreasing trends at Cide and Ulus precipitation stations, with a rate of change 7.10 mm/year and 3.26 mm/year , respectively, at the 5% significance level. Moreover, significant downward trends were detected at Kocairmak station (MAF varied 0.33 m3/s/year and MDF varied 4.55 m3/s/year); at Kocanaz station (MAF varied 0.04 m3/s/year); and at Bayiryuzu station (MDF varied 1.49 m3/s/year). The greatest relative changes in MAF and MDF were found at Kocairmak station, which can be considered as an indicator of non-stationarity. Thus, a non-stationary frequency analysis of the MDF series at Kocairmak station was performed, and the best-fitting model was found to use the AP series as a covariate, the same as other streamflow stations in the basin. In all stations, the non-stationary design flood quantiles were estimated to be greater than the stationary ones by up to 30%, which should be taken into account, particularly for designing flood mitigation facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an investigation of the structural behavior of a masonry arch bridge in Turkey. An analytical study has been conducted to provide the geometry of the structure, using laser scanning. A point cloud describing the geometry was obtained and properly transformed into a format that is appropriate for structural analysis software (CAE). Then, nonlinear finite-element models were developed to simulate structural responses of the bridge. The goal of the article is to highlight the influence of both continuum and discrete approaches and related constitutive laws on the responses of the bridge. Thus, continuum damage laws and a discrete model consisting of unilateral contact–friction interfaces were developed. Different load cases were tested and a comparison between the results obtained from the different approaches was considered. The failure mechanisms and the ultimate strengths were derived, and core points of the models were highlighted. The output of this work shows how the different failure models predict the behavior of the masonry arches. It also shows that the three-hinge mechanism, which has been depicted in classical studies for single-span arch masonry bridges under a horizontal settlement of supports, may also be obtained for multiarch bridges. Similarly, downward, vertical settlement of supports may result in the development of two hinges, as in single-span arches. Finally, the beneficial influence of the backfill in limiting the failure in the arch is addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The quality of the building stocks of most Middle Eastern countries is affected by earthquakes produced by the East Anatolian fault. On January 24, 2020, a medium-magnitude earthquake struck the Elazığ Province in eastern Turkey. The observed damage to structures was found to be excessive because of the poor-quality building stock of the region. In this study, the seismic behavior of the building stock of Elazığ after the January 24, 2020, Sivrice earthquake was discussed in detail. The reader was first provided with some insight regarding the Elazığ province. Next, the seismic behavior of the region and past earthquakes that occurred were examined to highlight the high seismicity of the region. Further, strong ground motion parameters and the hazards of the region were evaluated in detail, and the results of the reconnaissance studies were presented. Then, the reasons for the observed damage considering reinforced concrete and masonry structures were presented, and the field applications and past construction techniques were compared with the recent regulations established in 2018. Finally, rebuilding and resettlement activities after the earthquake were discussed in detail. From this study, it was found that the damages of structures in an earthquake-affected area can be attributed primarily to the design stage and improper control mechanisms employed during construction. Based on field investigations, poor-quality civil engineering applications on both reinforced concrete and masonry buildings were found to be fundamental factors that affected the seismic behavior of the considered structures. Rural regions were found to suffer extensive damage after the earthquake. The results suggest that excessive loss could have been prevented if required care were given to the construction practice. This study is expected to help improve the understanding regarding the seismic behavior of low-quality structures, and it is expected to encourage developments that will help enhance the seismic capacity of existing buildings in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of assessment methods is essential for proper planning, improvement of the water system, and water economy in municipal water management. Thus, statistical model approaches can be used to evaluate the factors influencing water administration, understand their implications, forecast future use, and develop these systems accurately. The main purposes of this study are to reveal the current status of municipal water management in Turkey, assess the system with alternative regression models (with comparisons), and propose suggestions to managers as a decision support approach. Missing data imputation methods are practiced in order to improve the data set and model quality. According to the results, water extraction, income, and water treatment facilities are the most important issues in municipal water management. It is also seen from the modeling results that dams and treatment plants have a negative impact on municipal water use. In order to establish an adaptive municipal water management structure in Turkey, a number of management suggestions are proposed and assessed according to the models, which have intrinsic variable selection feature. Consequently, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) may be practiced in short-term and cost-effective management planning. In long-term planning (with better model performance and high costs), elastic net and sparse least trimmed squares (LTS) may be preferred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]