Duzce province is located on the North Anatolian fault line in Duzce plain (Figure 2). As a result of the rapid industrialization in 1980-1998, migration to the city from the rural areas increased and therefore housing demand rapidly increased. The total area of the city is 2593 km² and the population is 307.056 according to 1997 census, the density of 111 people/ km² which is much more than Turkey’s average (83 people per km²). Rapid migration caused unplanned constuction in the city where users often added floors to old buildings which had been constructed on weak soil. New buildings were constructed rapidly with untrained labour and substandart material. Furthermore, there were no reliable control systems for building
construction (Duzce Municipality Chairmanship, 2000).