Determining and Analyzing Levels of Development in Rural Areas of Chaldran County

Diagnosis and study of possibilities and limitations is the first step of the process of planning for development of rural areas. For so doing, determining and analyzing levels of development of villages is crucially important. This is usually done by using quantitative methods. The main purpose of this paper is to determine and to analyze of development level of rural areas of county of Chaldran in northwest of West Azerbaijan Province. For this purpose, 38 variables of population, education, infrastructure, framework, health, administrative, services and economic indexes at township level have been employed. Moriss Model and coefficient of variation method have been used for analysis. Finally, using ArcGIS software, the results of classification of townships by all indexes have been provided as maps. According to findings of the research, none of the townships of the county can be considered as developed, four townships can be classified as developing and one is less developed. Regarding the distribution of facilities and services, the index of infrastructure–framework holds the least and the index of educational– cultural holds the most level of equilibrium.