Vulnerability analysis for air transportation network: A natural disaster scenario for Turkey

Natural disasters have an adverse impact on transportation activites, where this could return have environmental, social and economical impacts. This study examines the Turkish airtransport network in case of an possible disruption. According to the designed scenario, after a possible earthquake in Marmara region, the Istanbul Ataturk Airport is highly damaged and transport activity is disrupted. In order to detect the vulnerability towards that disruption, connectivity indicators are utilized, namely; closeness, betweenness and straightness. According to the results, even disruption of one airport may cause crucial performance issues in the airtransport network. In case of a possible disruption of the selected airport; the betweenness of all airports in the network will decrease 3%, straightness value will decrease 9% and the closeness values increase 9%. This sample scenario could aid decision makers to prioritize their investments, where the performance of the current network is quantitatively assessed.