**1. Introduction**

Bangladesh is located close to two active tectonic plates: the Indian plate and the Eurasian plate [1]. The country suffers from the seismic or earthquake zone of which two-thirds exists under major and moderate fault [2–4]. These fault zones were instrumental in causing some of the world's severest earthquakes in the past. According to the earthquake zoning map of 1993, it is observed that 26% of areas of Bangladesh lie in high risk, 38% moderate, and 36% in low-risk zone regarding earthquake vulnerability [5].

As one of the most densely populated mega-cities of the world, Dhaka becomes a high-risk earthquake zone [6, 7]. Earthquake Vulnerability Index (EVI) revealed that Dhaka city is 2nd among the 20 most vulnerable cities on the earth [8]. Over the past decades, it is estimated that the factors of susceptibility and vulnerability of earthquakes were the population density, haphazard migration, unplanned rapid urbanization, quicker made of new buildings in every available space, and most garment factory buildings built in congested areas without open spaces, non-compliance of building codes and proper guidelines, fire incidences from gas and electricity line, narrow spaces of road construction, insufficient of preparedness from the responding agencies and lack of awareness among city dwellers and decision makers [9, 10]. Around 13 million larger inhabitants, enormous poorly constructed, and dilapidated structures in unplanned Dhaka city signify extremely destructive and vulnerable situations for the massive loss of lives and property during a moderately large earthquake event [5, 11].

The United Nations IDNDR-RADIUS (International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction) identified that Dhaka city is located in the high-risk zone of earthquake hazards (Integrated Regional Information Networks News 2008) considering its massive population density along with unplanned building apartments, narrow streets, poorly constructed infrastructure, exposed and risky electrical lines, lack of coordination between institutions concerned, the inadequacy of recovery tools and lack of awareness among the people [9]. An unprecedented human disaster like moderate to heavy tremor may happen in the city at any time [7]. An overwhelming number of multi-story buildings have been created without following the standard building codes set by the *RAJUK (Rajdhani Unnayan Kortripokkho*, the English meaning Capital Development Authority) for meeting the millions of people's housing demands [9].

A few studies have been conducted so far for exploring the social causations of earthquake disasters. Therefore, the study aimed to explore the linkage between social causations of vulnerability and earthquake disaster perceptions in Dhaka South City. The research shed light on exploring the root causes of the progression of the vulnerability of earthquake hazards. In addition, we focus on finding out the dynamic pressure and unsafe conditions of the progression of vulnerability to observe how these factors lead to aggravating the vulnerability level to an earthquake disaster in Dhaka South City.
