Social vulnerability is a concept that expresses the capacity of a person or community to resist and cope with the effects of disasters as well as the characteristics that determine the size of the disaster in question.

Social vulnerability is generally determined using characteristics of individuals such as age, gender, health, income, employment status, and ethnicity. It is known that these characteristics increase the risk of disaster under certain conditions. For example, conditions such as individuals being sick, unemployed, being in the dependent age group, and having a low income level negatively affect their response to risk and make them more vulnerable to disasters. This situation causes social vulnerability to be evaluated as a result of social inequalities. However, along with these characteristics, the risk perception, awareness, consciousness level, value judgments and attitudes of the society are other characteristics that determine their level of social vulnerability to disasters.

All these characteristics determine how much individuals will be affected before, during and after the risk and how long it will take for them to recover from these effects. Therefore, identifying the vulnerable layers of the society is of great importance in determining the strategies to be developed to reduce disaster risk.

In this study, it is accepted that social vulnerability to disasters affects two different situations. In the first of these, social vulnerability is evaluated as the capacity to cope with the consequences of the disaster, reduce the negative effects and then return to normal. In addition, it is accepted that the characteristics of the individual and the society before encountering the danger also affect their level of exposure to disaster. In other words, the characteristics possessed play an important role in determining the level of exposure to disaster.

In this context, the research was designed on a household basis and at the neighborhood scale to cover the whole of Istanbul. In line with the field work carried out in this direction, the survey prepared to provide a basis for the analyses was applied in a total of 955 neighborhoods and was carried out in 41,093 households in a way that would reveal the social vulnerability texture of each neighborhood. Data was collected for a total of 139,688 people.

The basic step in the implementation of the project was to conduct a literature review on the concept of social vulnerability and to examine relevant studies in different countries. As a result of these examinations, the main indicator groups that were deemed appropriate to be addressed in Istanbul were determined and survey questionnaires were designed to obtain data for these indicators. Simultaneously, the sample to be applied in the field study was designed and the sample data was obtained from TÜİK. Before the field study, the comprehensibility, applicability and consistency of the surveys were checked with a pilot study and the questionnaires were revised in line with the results of the pilot study. Afterwards, the field study began and surveys were conducted simultaneously with online, telephone and field checks. Following the completion of the survey application, statistical analyses of the results were conducted and sample weights were calculated. Based on these results, a social vulnerability index was created and social vulnerability scores were produced to represent the entire province at the neighborhood scale. Finally, social vulnerability maps were created using these scores and all study steps were reported. The study was completed in 2018.