Future Earthquake Risk in Fragile Contexts: A Stakeholder-Oriented, People-Centred Assessment for Idlib, Syria

Modelling future disaster risk is a critical component of disaster risk management. This is particularly the case in conflict-affected regions where overlapping crises amplify the challenges of disasters. Idlib - a city in northwestern Syria near the Turkish border – illustrates these challenges. Decades of authoritarian governance, armed conflict, displacement, and infrastructural degradation have compounded its vulnerability to seismic hazards. The February 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake underscored these vulnerabilities, revealing both the city’s structural fragility and the political obstacles that undermine effective emergency response and recovery. With large-scale return migration and reconstruction now underway following Syria’s transition to a post-conflict government, understanding how risk may evolve in Idlib has become urgent.

We address this need by integrating quantitative risk modelling with qualitative insights from local stakeholders to assess potential future earthquake risk in Idlib. The analysis includes a new high-resolution building- and household-level exposure model of Idlib developed from various open data sources, including those of OpenStreetMap and the Global Earthquake Model, and population information from the International Organisation for Migration. The exposure model incorporates structural typology and building occupancy data – used to assign relevant physical vulnerability models from the Global Earthquake Model - and spatialised household information. Future projections of this exposure are then approximated based on urban development trend information obtained from local stakeholders and other relevant data sources, including UN Refugee Agency survey results about refugee return intention. Hazard characterisation leverages local ground-shaking data from the 2023 earthquake sequence.

The risk assessments quantify potential future losses in people-centred terms (e.g., potential earthquake-induced population displacement) rather than exclusively financial impacts. We use the assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of hypothetical policy interventions aimed at reducing building seismic vulnerability – such as introducing new construction techniques or enforcing stringent building codes- guided by stakeholder input. Comparative analysis of these hypothetical interventions highlights trade-offs between their cost/feasibility and the resulting risk reduction benefits. Beyond its case-study relevance, the study demonstrates the value of combining technical risk assessments with important contextual local knowledge in fragile settings.