VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT OF MUNICIPALITY AREAS TO NATURAL DISASTERS BASED ON GROUP FUZZY ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS

The frequency and consequences of natural disasters on functioning of a society require definition of indicators describing how critical a municipality area is, as well as the methods for assessing the vulnerability of an area. In this paper, system approach is applied to analyse the vulnerability of a municipality area, where factors and indicators are proposed and hierarchically organised for assessing vulnerability. Group multi-criteria analysis based on the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process is applied to rank key indicators. Identifying vulnerabilities can help municipalities to improve their potential to cope with adverse events and their consequences. Adequate identification of vulnerability causes, described by the set of indicators, improves coping and adaptive capacity, resource allocation and strategies for successful disaster management.