ORIGINAL PAPER Earthquake risk mitigation in Istanbul museums Mustafa Erdik Æ Eser Durukal Æ Nevra Ertu ¨rk Æ Bilgen Sungay Received: 18 April 2008 / Accepted: 30 May 2009 / Published online: 28 June 2009 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009 Abstract Considering the number of endangered museums in Istanbul and the size of their collections, assessing and mitigating the earthquake risk is an immense task by any standard. This paper provides a status report on the current earthquake risk mitigation efforts taken by the museums in Turkey. It summarizes several projects that have been carried out over the past few years to protect museums and its collections from earthquake damage and defines future actions that would mitigate earthquake risks associated with museum buildings and their contents. Keywords Earthquake Á Museums Á Istanbul Á Risk Á Mitigation 1 Introduction Istanbul is continuously threatened by earthquakes that endanger lives and the preservation of its material heritage. The last 2,000 years of historical records of Istanbul indicate that the city experiences a medium intensity (i.e., Io = VII–VIII) earthquake every 50 years and a high intensity earthquake (i.e., Io = VIII–IX) approximately every 300 years. Studies of both the historical and contemporary seismicity of the region, as well as geophysical and geological research, support the expectation of a major earthquake (of magnitude larger than seven on the Mercalli scale) in the very near future. Such an earthquake is likely to originate from the fault system of the Marmara Sea region. These faults are *20 km south of Istanbul. Given the proximity of these major faults and the magnitude of the earthquake expected, it is clear that the museums and cultural collections of Istanbul face great threats. It is a well-known fact from the history that earthquakes have caused significant damage to historical structures in Istanbul. The most recent damage was suffered as a result of the M. Erdik (&) Á E. Durukal Á B. Sungay Bog ˘azic ¸i University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: erdik@boun.edu.tr N. Ertu ¨rk Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey 123 Nat Hazards (2010) 53:97–108 DOI 10.1007/s11069-009-9411-2