Build disaster resilience into shopping centre operations

Submitted through the COP31 Sustainable Transformation Awards · SKD Türkiye (WBCSD Global Network Partner)

The company owns and manages shopping centres in the retail property sector, running the Burda portfolio in seven cities in Türkiye together with its head office locations.

Türkiye carries high earthquake risk, and the assets at the centre of this business model are buildings that host large numbers of people every day: employees, security and cleaning teams, tenants and around 40 million visitors a year. A disruptive event at one of these sites is at the same time a life safety problem, a business interruption problem, and a problem for the economic and social life of the surrounding city.

Statutory emergency planning and occupational health and safety duties cover part of that exposure, but they treat buildings, people, technology and suppliers as separate compliance tracks. The company concluded that preparedness had to be managed as a single system, owned at chief executive level, and evidenced by measured readiness rather than by documented plans alone.

The baseline year is 2023. A maturity assessment and the first drills carried out that year identified three areas needing development: knowledge of correct behaviour during an event, standardisation of plans across locations, and the discipline of running drills. In 2024 the management procedure and the full plan set were written, and in 2025 the system was operated across the portfolio through training, field application, drills and technical checks.

Natural disaster and physical risks are also carried in the strategic risk inventory and followed under board oversight mechanisms, and performance data is published in the company's sustainability reporting (1).

Location of the initiative: Burda shopping centres in seven cities across Türkiye, plus the head office locations

The response is a Life and Business Continuity Programme that brings life safety, physical asset resilience, crisis management, continuity of critical activities, technology, communication and critical service providers into one measurement and improvement cycle, going beyond the statutory emergency plan and occupational health and safety obligations that preceded it.

Governance sits with a Crisis Management Committee in which the chief executive acts as Crisis Management Leader, alongside the chief financial officer, the chief operating officer and the directors of people and culture, corporate communication, property management and technology. The committee owns the management system and approves strategic alignment, investment and resource needs, test and drill results, and the resulting actions.

The documentation is deliberately layered. A Life and Business Continuity Management Procedure sets policy, roles, the decision tree, communication and measurement standards centrally, while each location builds its own emergency action plan around its structural characteristics, hazards, stakeholders and critical activities. Crisis and crisis communication plans, disaster recovery and IT continuity plans, and business continuity plans for six critical departments complete the set, integrated on a plan-do-check-act cycle.

Physical measures run alongside the planning work. Buildings receive preliminary structural checks and, where the findings require it, detailed technical inspection. Non-structural risk is addressed by writing seismic measures into decoration and fit-out specifications, so that tenant works do not reintroduce hazards, and an early warning system has been installed at one asset.

Preparedness deliberately reaches past the company's own payroll. Store employees work to a dedicated instruction, critical service providers including security and cleaning teams take part in training and drills, and employees and their families are offered practical family disaster plan training and disaster kits.

The company also takes the experience outside its own boundary. Under the disaster relief and preparedness committee of the shopping centre investors' association, it hosted a sector meeting at which centre managers, technical and operations teams, occupational health and safety specialists and disaster management leads compared their experience of the 2025 earthquakes. A workshop held on 3 February 2026 addressed the standardisation of evacuation and work-stoppage decisions, a controlled exit approach, and the development of a shared guidance document.

Figure 1: The Life and Business Continuity Management System: the Crisis Management Committee led by the chief executive, the central management procedure beneath it, and the four plan groups that run down to location emergency action plans, all held in one plan-do-check-act cycle across seven shopping centres and the head office.

Figure 2: The five tracked readiness indicators against the 2023 starting point and the 2025 reported result. The company records documented progress rather than a maturity score: numeric baselines were not set in 2023, so a percentage improvement cannot be calculated.

Sustainability Impact

Climate

The initiative is an adaptation and resilience measure rather than an emissions reduction measure: it does not target Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions, and no greenhouse gas reduction is claimed for it.

Its climate contribution is the integration of physical climate and disaster risk into enterprise risk management. Natural disaster and physical risks are held in the strategic risk inventory and reviewed through board oversight mechanisms, which places acute physical risk in the same decision process as financial and operational risk instead of leaving it inside facilities management.

Because the assets host around 40 million visitors a year in seven cities, the resilience of these buildings is also the resilience of the retail activity, employment and public space they provide when an extreme event occurs.

Social

Life safety for employees, visitors, tenants and service providers is the primary outcome, and readiness is measured rather than assumed. Five indicators are tracked: 1. hours of disaster, emergency and security training; 2. number of training and drill participants; 3. coverage of up-to-date location plans; 4. drill headcount verification rate; and 5. completion level of structural and non-structural risk controls.

In 2025 more than 1,990 hours of security and disaster training were delivered. Practical family disaster plan training was run at every location with 201 participants, and participant satisfaction was measured at 3.96 out of 5. Disaster kits and their basic contents were provided to employees.

Emergency plans were updated at all locations, a dedicated instruction was prepared for store employees, and business continuity plans were completed for six critical functions. Preliminary structural checks were carried out on the buildings, with detailed technical inspection where needed; seismic measures were added to decoration specifications to reduce non-structural risk; and an early warning system was installed at one asset.

The scope of the effect extends to seven Burda shopping centres and the head office locations, to permanent employees, security and cleaning teams, employees' families, tenants and around 40 million visitors a year.

The data covers the period from 2023 to 2025 and is tracked through training records, satisfaction surveys, drill and incident reports, technical inspection outputs, plan revisions and the strategic risk inventory. Results are assessed by the Crisis Management Committee and senior management and updated through annual review and corrective action.

Business Impact

Benefits

The direct benefit is the ability to keep critical activities running at an acceptable level during a disruption, which protects rental income, tenant trading and the operating continuity of assets that would otherwise close for an indefinite period after an event.

Decision speed improves. Because roles, the decision tree and communication rules are fixed in advance and rehearsed, evacuation, work-stoppage and controlled exit decisions are taken against a defined standard rather than improvised under pressure, which limits both the safety consequences and the length of the interruption.

Continuity plans for six critical functions, together with disaster recovery and IT continuity, remove single points of failure in the corporate functions that the whole portfolio depends on.

Preparedness has become a shared capability with tenants, store employees and critical service providers rather than a company-only asset, and the sector work under the industry association converts individual experience into common practice that reduces the cost of preparedness for everyone involved.

Costs

The cost base is carried in the annual operating, training, technical inspection and risk management budgets, supported by specialist consultancy, internal teams and critical service providers.

The main cost items are the maturity assessment and preliminary structural checks, detailed technical inspection where the findings require it, the early warning system installed at one asset, disaster kits and their contents, the training and drill programme including family disaster plan sessions, and the working time that employees, store teams and service providers spend in training and drills rather than in operations.

Seismic requirements written into decoration and fit-out specifications raise the cost of tenant works, which is a cost that has to be negotiated with tenants rather than absorbed centrally.

Costs are contained by running a common management backbone with modular local plans, so that policy, roles and measurement standards are written once and only the location-specific content is repeated, and by reusing the same evidence base for occupational health and safety, risk management and sustainability reporting.

The model depends on continuity rather than on capital: benefits decline quickly if drills are not repeated, if new employees are not trained after turnover, or if service providers stop taking part.

Impact Beyond Sustainability And Business

Co-benefits

Family disaster plan training extends preparedness into households, so the benefit is carried by employees' families and not only by the workplace.

Shopping centres that remain usable after an event provide shelter, supply and public space to the surrounding district, which is why the programme is framed around the role of these assets in the economic and social life of the seven cities they serve.

The sector meetings hosted under the industry association's disaster committee turn one company's experience into shared learning, and the work on standardising evacuation, work-stoppage and controlled exit decisions creates a common decision language that other operators can adopt without repeating the same assessment work.

Potential side-effects

The principal trade-off is variation between locations. A modular model lets each site write plans against its own hazards, but it also allows implementation quality to diverge, which is managed through standard documentation, field verification and senior management oversight.

Employee turnover erodes trained capability, and drill discipline decays if the cycle is not repeated, so the programme carries a permanent training load rather than a one-off cost.

Participation by critical service providers cannot be assumed, because security and cleaning teams are employed by contractors whose own turnover and priorities differ from the company's; their inclusion has to be written into service arrangements and refreshed.

Documented plans can create a false sense of readiness. The early drills showed exactly that risk, which is why headcount verification during drills is tracked as an indicator in its own right.

Typical Business Profile

The model suits owners and operators of multi-site property portfolios in hazard-exposed regions, where the physical asset is the business model and where large numbers of people who are not employees are present in the building at any moment.

It is applicable to shopping centres, offices, mixed-use developments, hospitality, logistics facilities and other buildings with heavy user traffic, at different asset sizes, because the central management backbone stays the same while the location-level content follows each site's risk profile.

It is most relevant for organisations that already have a corporate risk function and board-level risk oversight, since the programme depends on physical risk being carried in the strategic risk inventory rather than in a facilities checklist.

Delivery engages senior management, property and facility management, occupational health and safety, technology, corporate communication, people and culture, and procurement, together with tenants and contracted service providers.

Approach

1. Place ownership at chief executive level: Establish a crisis management committee in which the chief executive acts as crisis management leader, with the finance, operations, people, communication, property management and technology directors as members, and give the committee authority over the management system, the investment and resource decisions, and the actions arising from tests and drills.

2. Run a maturity assessment and first drills before writing plans: Assess existing preparedness across life safety, buildings, critical operations, technology, communication and service providers, and use the first drills to expose behavioural and documentation gaps, so that the plan set is written against observed weaknesses rather than against a template.

3. Write one central procedure, then location-level plans: Set policy, roles, the decision tree, communication rules and measurement standards centrally, and require each location to build its emergency action plan on its own structural characteristics, hazards, stakeholders and critical activities.

4. Identify critical activities through business impact analysis: Work with senior management and corporate functions to establish critical processes, dependencies and recovery priorities, then produce business continuity plans for the functions that cannot be interrupted, together with crisis communication, disaster recovery and IT continuity plans.

5. Check the buildings, then control the fit-out: Carry out preliminary structural checks across the portfolio, commission detailed technical inspection where the findings require it, and add seismic measures to decoration and fit-out specifications so that non-structural hazards are not reintroduced by tenant works.

6. Train beyond the payroll: Extend training and drills to critical service providers including security and cleaning teams, issue a dedicated instruction to store employees, and offer employees and their families practical family disaster planning and disaster kits, so that preparedness covers everyone present in the building.

7. Measure readiness with a fixed indicator set: Track training hours, participant numbers, currency of location plans, the drill headcount verification rate and the completion level of structural and non-structural risk controls, and verify results in the field rather than on paper.

8. Feed findings back and take them to the sector: Convert drill observations, incident reports, technical findings, plan validations and employee feedback into corrective actions, document revisions, new training, seismic measures or technology investment; review the procedure at least annually with chief executive approval; and share the experience through industry committees to standardise evacuation, work-stoppage and controlled exit decisions.

Stakeholders Involved

• Project leads: The chief executive acts as Crisis Management Leader and chairs the Crisis Management Committee, which owns the Life and Business Continuity Management System and approves strategic alignment, investment, drill results and corrective actions. A Business Continuity Officer coordinates the business impact analyses, plans, procedures, training, tests and actions, and runs the annual review. Natural disaster and physical risks are additionally monitored through the strategic risk inventory and board oversight mechanisms, and procedure updates take effect on chief executive approval.

• Company functions: The finance, operations, people and culture, corporate communication, property management and technology functions sit on the committee and are each responsible for the continuity of their own critical processes. Shopping centre and facility managers and the location emergency teams carry the implementation in the field, supported by occupational health and safety specialists who brought location hazards and workable scenarios into the design.

• Main providers: Specialist technical consultancies carry out the structural and detailed technical inspections and support the business impact analysis work. An equipment supplier provided the early warning system installed at one asset. Contracted security and cleaning teams are treated as critical service providers and are included in the training and drill cycle rather than being managed only through the service contract.

• Other: The shopping centre investors' association hosts the disaster relief and preparedness committee under which the sector meetings and the February 2026 workshop were held, bringing together centre managers, technical and operations teams, occupational health and safety specialists and disaster management leads from other operators. Tenants and store employees participate through the dedicated store instruction and field application. Employees' families take part in the family disaster plan training. Local communities, non-governmental organisations, local government and public authorities are engaged as stakeholders of the assets' role in urban resilience.

Key Parameters To Consider

The baseline year is 2023 and the reported data covers 2023 to 2025, so the results describe a system that has been operating for a short period and is still building its drill history.

The procedure and its annexes are reviewed at least once a year, and updates take effect on chief executive approval, which sets the minimum cycle time for the whole system.

Continuity over the medium and long term is secured through annual operating, training, technical inspection and risk management budgets, specialist consultancy, internal teams and critical service providers, rather than through a one-off project budget.

The main risks are variation in implementation between locations, employee turnover, service provider participation and the continuity of drills. Standard documentation, periodic training, field verification and senior management oversight are the controls applied to them.

Short-term work focuses on plan validations, critical supplier preparedness, early warning and alternative communication solutions; medium-term work on comparing location maturity, repeating scenario-based drills and standardising good practice across the portfolio.

Implementation And Operations Tips

Drills reveal what documents cannot. The behavioural gaps seen in the early drills were the reason practical training and family disaster planning were expanded, and they would not have been visible from a plan review.

Verify headcount during drills and track the verification rate as an indicator. It is the single measure that shows whether the evacuation procedure actually works at a site with thousands of people present.

Non-structural risk returns through tenant works, so the control point is the fit-out specification rather than the building itself. Writing seismic requirements into decoration specifications is cheaper than remediating afterwards.

Extend preparedness to families. Employees who have a household plan behave differently at work during an event, and the family training was the element with the highest measured participant satisfaction.

Take evacuation and work-stoppage decisions to the sector rather than solving them alone. Different operators applying different thresholds in the same city produces conflicting public guidance, which is what the controlled exit work under the industry association is intended to prevent.

External Links

• Sustainability reports

Sources

(1) Sustainability reports