How smart and sustainable are the cities in Turkiye? - National policies and the enthusiasm level of the local governments.

In the past decade, the importance of the smart city applications has gained popularity by the city governments to use their resources in an efficient and effective way, present better services and quality of life for their residents, make their cities more competitive, provide better disaster management. As the world has experienced crisis such as energy and grain in the recent past due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine, the management of the resources has become more important for the countries and local governments, as well. In this study national government plans of Turkiye, such as Eleventh Development Plan and 2020-2023 National Strategy and Action Plan for Smart Cities, have been addressed as reference documents and the actions of some city governments, including the most populous city, Istanbul and the capital, Ankara, have been examined with the purpose of determining the level of smart city willingness. This study peruses the degree of enthusiasm of the local governments to become smart and maintain sustainable city services considering the main smart city characteristics. Based on the information gathered concerning the selected cities, it has been observed that the cities having populations quite lower than the great metropolitans such as Istanbul and Ankara are more enthusiastic and successful to provide services for their citizens that can be associated with the smart city concept.

Selection of MSW landfill site for Konya, Turkey using GIS and multi-criteria evaluation.

Landfill is a common solution for the final disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW) in Turkey. Landfill siting is an extremely difficult task to accomplish because the site selection process depends on different factors and regulations. To ensure that an appropriate site is chosen, a systematic process should be developed and followed. Unsuccessful landfill siting is typically the result of strong public opposition. In this study, candidate sites for an appropriate landfill area in Cumra County of Konya City are determined by using the integration of geographic information systems (GIS) and multi-criteria evaluation (MCE). ArcGIS 9.0 software and its extensions were used as the GIS tool since it is able to perform suitability analysis using MCE analysis. To identify appropriate landfill areas in the Cumra district, eight input map layers including proximity to municipal and local wells and irrigational canals, distance from transportation routes and rails, distance from archaeological sites, distance from urban areas, land use/land cover, and land slope are used in constraint mapping. A final map was generated which identifies regions showing suitability for the location of the landfill site. According to the map, 6.8% of the study area is most suitable, 15.7% is suitable, 10.4% is moderately suitable, 25.8% is poorly suitable, and 41.3% is unsuitable. At the end of the analyses, three candidate sites are determined. The selection of the final MSW landfill site, however, requires further field research.

Spatial and temporal groundwater level variation geostatistical modeling in the city of Konya, Turkey.

Groundwater is one of the most important resources used for drinking and utility and irrigation purposes in the city of Konya, Turkey, as in many areas. The purpose of this study is to evaluate spatial and temporal changes in the level of groundwater by using geostatistical methods based on data from 91 groundwater wells during the period 1999 to 2003. Geostatistical methods have been used widely as a convenient tool to make decisions on the management of groundwater levels. To evaluate the spatial and temporal changes in the level of the groundwater, a vector-based geographic information system software package, ArcGIS 9.1 (Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, California), was used for the application of an ordinary kriging method, with cross-validation leading to the estimation of groundwater levels. The average value of variogram (spherical model) for the spatial analysis was approximately 2150 m. Results of ordinary kriging for groundwater level drops were underestimated by 17%. Cross-validation errors were within an acceptable level. The kriging model also helps to detect risk-prone areas for groundwater abstraction.