delphi method

Identifying and measuring sustainability through social, economic and environmental aspects is a priority in strategic decisions of policy makers. Also consideration of local context in urban sustainability assessment is important for the developing countries because of the varying stakeholder needs and priorities. The present study aimed to develop a practical framework consisting of GIS and MCDM using fuzzy logic to measure the sustainability of Karaj, a city in the west of Tehran, Iran. First, seven criteria and 24 sub-criteria of urban sustainability were identified based on literature review, interviews with experts, and Delphi technique. Then, the criteria were weighted and prioritized using Group fuzzy BWM. Fuzzy logic and Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) method in GIS were used to determine the sustainability potential of Karaj. Based on the results, the socioeconomic and employment criteria weighting 0.383 and 0.182 were the most important, and biological criteria and distance from the military lands with weight of 0.0383, 0.00337 were respectively the least important in the GF-BWM method. In terms of spatial distribution, both methods estimated that about 30% of the entire study area was highly sustainable. The integrated application of multi-criteria decision-making method and GIS provided a more flexible and cost-effective tool for decision making in urban planning and managemen.

In the context of urban development, cities; in addition to other components, comprise one of the main focuses for solving global challenges of sustainable development.  Despite the obvious clarity of the ecological and environmental problems and their consequences, there is no common ground for a sustainable city pattern or paradigm, and many ambiguities in this regard add to the complexity of the situation. Based on the results of various studies, researchers have argued that the form of cities and the pattern of land use are the main determinants of urban sustainability. To achieve a sustainable city, several conceptual models have been proposed, each with different and sometimes contradictory goals. In this study, by reviewing various references, 59 goals were determined for urban sustainability. Using Delphi method in three stages of receiving information from 12 specialists and experts and calculating the functions, the degree of importance and the percentage of importance of these goals were prioritized. Results showed that of the 59 goals, in the environmental sustainability group, traffic reduction, water quality protection and air quality improvement ranked first to third, with a percentage of importance of 36.3, 35.3 and 34.6, respectively, for sustainable urban development. On the other hand, the goal of ensuring the existence of adequate and sufficient development capacity in the stock market in the economic group with 18/6% importance was not met and eliminated. However, in terms of economic goals, equality in wealth and services distribution were pinpointed as the important criteria.

Cultural ecosystem services are defined as non-material benefits people obtain from a direct contact with ecosystems through spiritual enrichment, cognitive development, reflection, recreation, and aesthetic experiences. Policy and decision-making for environmental management, land-use planning and development at different scales can be enhanced by quantification and incorporation of ecosystem services. Incommensurability with valuation methods has led researchers to assess the cultural services using noneconomic techniques such as multi criteria analysis. However, cultural services are assessed less than other services due to the lack of sufficient knowledge and appropriate criteria. Therefore, this research has tried to identify criteria for evaluation of cultural services using literature review and content analysis. Then, the criteria have been prioritized for cultural services assessment through Delphi method. In the study area, the aspects aesthetic, educational, heritage, inspirational, sense of place, recreational, religious and spiritual with a normalized coefficient of 0.1808, 0.1545, 0.1382, 0.1303, 0.1265 and 0.1190 were the most important criteria, respectively.

In this research, Delphi method was implemented in three stages to select 43 development indices based on the consensus of experts, and weighted by analytic hierarchy process method. In order to rank the development of Iran's Provinces, scripting in Excel was undertaken to implement the TOPSIS method. The software implements all the steps of the TOPSIS to calculate the distance from the positive and negative ideal solutions, the relative closeness to the ideal solution, and finally the automatic ranking of the Provinces and it provides diagrams, tables, and a map showing the development stage of the Provinces. By upgrading the TOPSIS method from manual mode to the automatic software-based in Excel, the ranking is done fast and the display of the results has been facilitated through tables, diagrams and report forms. The features of this program are its user-friendliness, repeatability using different weights, very small software size and possibility of determining the factors that may promote or demote a province. In this research, based on the statistical information of the year 2015, the ranking of development status of the provinces was carried out. In the first run and with the obtained weights, the provinces Markazi, Yazd and Guilan ranked first to third, and the provinces Northern Khorasan, Qom and Chaharmahal va Bakhtiari won the last three places. Certainly, by changing the weights and repeating the process, a sensitivity analysis can be made and it can be showed that which province(s) maintain their relative position with changes in the weights.

After the Industrial Revolution, many environmental problems arose with the increasing population of cities and the formation of millions of cities. So that various approaches to preserving the urban environment such as Garden City, Green Town, Ecological City and Sustainable Urban Development, have been proposed in urban planning literature, which can be considered as the basis for the emergence of Livable cities. Nowadays, it is important to have the characteristics of livability in cities in order to achieve sustainable development in the community. Therefore, the present study uses a descriptive-analytical approach using Interpretive Structure Modeling to determine the effective indicators on the livability of Tabriz metropolis Identify, level, and eventually provide a suitable model for Tabriz Metropolis. At first, the indices needed for research were identified by using content analysis, Delphi method and interview with experts in 3 dimensions and 13 indicators. In the next step, using Interpretive Structure Modeling (ISM), the status of indicators and leveling they were completed and finally, using the Mic Mac technique, the types of indicators were identified in the form of four types of independent, affiliate, linkage and key indicators. The results of the research indicate that the five indicators: the fair distribution of infrastructure and services, sustainable employment, the development of public and sustainable transport, increased individual and social security and the development of general education as key indicators play a very important role in the status of livability  metropolitan  of Tabriz. Also, the most important dimensions affecting the livability of Tabriz metropolitan are economic, social and environmental.

It is no longer acceptable to design an unchangeable plan, especially in landscape architecture where end-users should be at the centre of any design. Much literature discusses the influence of public involvement in the landscape design process and its necessity in contemporary life. However, the implementation of public participatory design has proved to be challenging and even problematic in many cases in the world. The initiated, civic leaders and professional experts generally develop and manage open space planning and design with a relatively limited level of public participation considering what is possible. The range of creativity from those who participate is limited for a range of reasons, premises and constraints; these will be discussed in the literature review. The need exists for landscape architects to work from an understanding of the ranges of participation and the ranges of creativity that can be elicited in order to deliver sustainable designs. For several decades the theories of public participation were discussed in Europe and North America, but the application of this in many other countries remained under-researched. Of specific interest in this article, public participatory design was used in Iran for the past few centuries (until a few decades ago) as a common solution. Although this practice has continued in many villages, public participation is not often practised in Iran’s cities anymore, and the few attempts at using it were not successful. So the aim of this article is to identify the obstacles to public participation specifically in Iran, and to classify these barriers by Iranian architectural designers. A mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods has been used in this study. First, the main obstacles were extracted from the literature, then they were classified into five groups, namely technical, cultural, social, economic and political. After classifying the obstacles, these were assessed by interviewing Iranian landscape designers, with the help of the Delphi method. The Delphi method is a structured communication technique or method, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. The experts answer questionnaires over two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator or agent of change provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that, during this process, the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the ‘correct’ answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a predefined stop criterion and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results. In this research, the Delphi panel comprised ten landscape architects, six architects and four urban designers who work in laboratories and companies which depend on landscape architecture. Their assessment emerged in a table and its content validity ratio (CVR) was calculated and interpreted. The main obstacles extracted from the literature were classified into five groups: technical, cultural, social, economic and political. Each of these groups contained a few obstacles and there are twenty-two elements in total. Technical obstacles included finding the right members to represent people and end-users, the age at which people participate in the design process, lack of expert knowledge and experience in public participatory landscape design, lack of people’s knowledge and experience in public participatory landscape design, inefficiency of public participatory landscape design methods, uncertainty over how people ideas and decides affect the last decision and the design, and the lack of a free and comfortable relationship between end-users, employers and designers. Executive obstacles included increasing arguments between participants of public participatory landscape design, inefficiency of implementing systems and the time-consuming nature of public participatory design. Cultural obstacles included unwillingness of people, employers and designers to involve in a participatory design process. Social obstacles included lack of free time in contemporary society, divergent orientations and interests of contemporary society, the separation of contemporary society from social activity, lack of popular power to prove what they want in participatory design process, selfishness in contemporary society and prioritization in decision-making which depends on social outreach. Economic obstacles included the high expense of participatory design process. Political obstacles included nervousness about public participation and wrong and inefficient policies. Finally, technical and political groups of obstacles achieved the highest rank in respect of expert opinions. From among twenty-two obstacles, respectively, the unwillingness of employers to involve in a participatory design process, the age at which people participated in the design process, the lack of a free and comfortable relationship between end-users, employers and designers, wrong and inefficient policies, and lack of popular power to prove what they want in participatory design process were distinguished as the most important obstacles. Based on the research foundations, we presented a few suggestions to improve the participatory design process in Iran. On the one hand, the unwillingness of employers to be involved in a public participatory design process was distinguished as the first and main barrier. In Iran, the main employer of public landscape designers is the Government. On the other hand, wrong and inefficient policies were distinguished as the third barrier and, in Iran, this refers to governmental regulations. So, from these statements the important role of Government and its regulations in improving the participatory design process emerges and it shows that there is a need for promotion and revision of governmental regulations and policies. Developed countries, in contrast, have special regulations and policies which encourage public participatory landscape design and guide the process to be more efficient.

Tourism industry is one of the main sources of income, employment and infrastructure to achieve sustainable development. Growth of this industry in any country requires the proper strategy and effective management plan. In this study, planning and prioritization for five villages of Qeshm Island called Ramakan, Doulab, Souza, Hoomeh and Sallakh for tourism development are considered.
Using Delphi method, tourism criteria were identified in four main categories including, environmental criteria, tourism facilities and services criteria, cultural socioeconomic criteria and infrastructure criteria. Then tourism development prioritization for villages was obtained by TOPSIS method.
The results showed that Hoomeh was the most suitable village for tourism development and Sallakh, Souza, Doulab and Ramakan were suitable respectively. Zoning the areas with good potential for coastal tourism would play a key role in regional development. Enjoying many and varied potentials of the region would not be feasible unless the multidimensional approach and planning are followed.

Forest parks are produced in two ways of natural or man-made in the territory or within the urban areas. The utilization of the forest parks with respect to the various functions of such parks is of interest to the management of the urban areas, especially in metropolitans.
As forest parks are so important, therefore: this research is a case study of Jahan Nama forest parks in Karaj in order to identify and evaluate the utilization criteria for ranking the management performance. The methods in this research are Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach, Delphi method, Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) and Fuzzy Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS).
The results show that 6 criteria of Environmental with 5 descriptors, social with 3 descriptors, Ecological with 4 descriptors, Sports with 2 descriptors, Cultural and Educational with 3 descriptors and Economical with 4 descriptors are significant in optimum utilization of urban forest parks.
As a result, the optimum utilization depends on the criteria of stylizing the air, beatifying the landscapes, reducing air pollution, maintaining biodiversity, reducing natural hazards, fulfilling the functions recreation and social interactions, balancing urban ecosystems, sports facilities, equipment and children’s playgrounds, gardening education, libraries, cultural interactions and entrepreneurship and income.

Mangrove forests are one of the highly productive ecosystems in the world but in recent years they have been threatened by human activities and natural events. In the other hands lack of the criteria for Exito-Conservation site selection decreases mangrove forest area in the world. The aim of this paper is prioritizing necessary criteria for identification of developmental zones for Avicennia marina as one of the true mangrove species with many economic and ecologic values in the world. Hence, at first according to our goals, 23 essaies from Iran and other countries were surveyed and conclusion of them were attended. Then tried to identify necessary criteria and assembled them in a new structure. On the whole, 3 criteria and 9 sub criteria were identified for selection of developmental sites. Afterwards based on the Delphi method, these criteria were screened out and the important scale and line model for using in GIS estimated. According to our conclusions by the order of importance: land physical traits, land chemical traits, tidal, waves, air temperature, water quality, climate and precipitation are sub criteria for selection of developmental sites.