Assessing the Development of Energy Infrastructure and Communication of Rural Areas in Lorestan (The Promethee Approach)

The general objectives of regional planning and economic development include the establishment of social justice and distribution of welfare and wealth among people in a society. To achieve these objectives in any society, different programs and plans are required to be developed and executed. Therefore, through development of deprivation-removal programs, planners are trying to reduce the gaps and inequalities. In most developing countries, one, two or at most a couple of regions are in a good status in terms of public services and socioeconomic prosperity, so that play a major role in the development of national income and product. This is the cost keeping other areas underdeveloped and increasing the gap between the regions and districts. The aim of this study is to evaluate the development of the townships by Lorestan province in terms of energy and communication infrastructure in rural areas.
Theoretical Framework: After the 1960s, the use of statistical models and quantitative use of various methods tend policy-makers, planners and geographers including justification for the use of these techniques (mathematically) increased their choices.
Decision models to help make the right decision and have expanded into two groups of models of multi-objective and multi-attribute models are divided. Prometheus component and as an efficient method of MADM methods and the use of the words "preferred" and "indifference" is to select the best option. The method in various fields (such as operations research and dynamic management) is used.
The present research was a scientific-applied, descriptive-analytical study. Considering the interaction between the criteria used in this study, analytic network process (ANP) was used for data analysis. In addition, Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model was used to determine the development level of studied regions. First of all, theoretical foundations related to the research subject were reviewed using library studies and referring to related documents. In this study, to assess the townships of Lorestan (in the period 2011) in terms of indices of development of energy infrastructure and communications, Prometheus-2 (who focuses on ranking discrete options) is used. So, the development indicators were selected in order to determine the level of development in Lorestan Province in ratio shape. Indicators of research include:1-ratio villages with access to the railway station to the total inhabited villages; 2-ratio villages with access to the public transportation to the total inhabited villages; 3-ratio villages possessed of newspapers and magazines to the total inhabited villages; 4-ratio villages possessed of Internet to the total inhabited villages; 5-ratio villages possessed of ICT to the total inhabited villages; 6-ratio villages possessed of office contacts to the total inhabited villages;7- ratio villages possessed of post office to the total inhabited villages; 8-ratio villages possessed of paved roads to total villages inhabited;9- ratio villages possessed of Kerosene distribution agency to total villages inhabited; 10-ratio villages possessed of fuel station to total villages inhabited; 11- ratio villages possessed of National electricity network to total villages inhabited; 12-ratio villages possessed of gas pipeline to total villages inhabited; 13-ratio villages possessing water purification system to total villages inhabited.
It should be noted that data analysis was done using Visual PROMETHEE and Super Decision software.
In the present study, ANP method was used to weight the indicators. ANP is a more extensive version of AHP which deals with internal relationships between the decision-making levels. Therefore, in structuring the decision-making levels, both internal and external relationships should be taken into account. Considering the weight of indexes, original table of Prometheus-2 is presented as follows: Table 1- Features of development indicators
indicator
trait 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
MIN/ MAX Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max Max
Preference Fn. V V V V V V V V V V V V V
Weight 0.090 0.090 0.053 0.055 0.052 0.055 0.050 0.084 0.069 0.054 0.118 0.108 0.141
S: (Gaussian) - - - - - - - - - - - - -
P: (Preference) 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Q: (Indifference) - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The overall results, is provided in the table below. Based on this, Borujerd is the first developed township in terms of rural infrastructure facilities with net inflow of 0.089. Also, only the net flow four township is positive.
Table 2- PROMETHEE values
Kuhdasht Poldokhtar Dore Delfan Selsele Khorramabad Borujerd Drood Aligodarz Azna
Phi 0.0269 0.0145 0.0429 0.0095 0.0871 0.0252 0.1040 0.0818 0.0415 0.090
Phi- 0.0571 0.0803 0.0449 0.0860 0.0176 0.0792 0.0144 0.0195 0.0987 0.0261
Phi -0.030 -0.065 -0.002 -0.076 0.069 -0.054 0.089 0.062 -0.057 0.064
The following shapes, townships of Lorestan performance of the indices and PROMETHEE network is shown.
Figure 1- Performance of townships of LORESTAN
Figure 2- PROMETHEE network
Conclusion & Suggestions: The experience of regional studies in different countries show that some areas of a country have better performance and thus enjoy a more favorable development and growth, compared to other areas. Therefore, if the planners can identify the factors affecting the proper functioning of different areas, they can both take advantage of the experiences of managers in each area and optimally allocate the available funds. Development inequality among regions or cities is of issues raised in the literature of regional planning in recent years and has been warmly welcomed in academic circles. To reduce these inequalities that is one of the best examples of development and sustainable development, regional planning should be taken into account. The first step in this kind of planning is to identify and understand inequalities between regions. The present research aimed to study indicators of rural infrastructure development in order to determine the level of development in counties of Lorestan province using the latest available statistics. Given the interaction between development factors, ANP was used to determine weights of the elements. The results showed that the order of enjoyment in terms of studied criteria is as follows: Borujerd, Selsele, Azna, Drood, Dore, Kuhdasht, Khorramabad, Aligodarz, Poldokhtar, and Delfan.