Assessing the Degree of Development in the Country’s Border Provinces Using Development Indicators through Numerical Taxonomy and TOPSIS Models

The purpose of this research is measuring the development indicators in the country's border provinces. Accordingly, sixteen border provinces on the basis of eleven indicators: educational, cultural-sports, religious, political-administrative, infrastructure, health, services, transportation, communications, employment, literates and residential units, drawn from the statistical census of population and housing and the Statistical Yearbook, using numerical taxonomy and TOPSIS model, in order for the level and degree of development of the provinces to be determined. The type of the research is applied and library data was collected and analyzed using Excel and Arc GIS mapping software. The results show that: from the total of 16 border provinces; 2 province were marked as developed, 5 provinces Semi-developed, 4 province less-developed and 5 provinces were located as deprived. Khorasan Razavi province with the degree of development 0.024 according to numerical taxonomy model and 0.974 according to TOPSIS model were considered as the most developed of the country border provinces and Ilam province with the degree of development 0.868 according to numerical taxonomy model and 0.008 according to TOPSIS model were considered as the most deprived of the country border provinces.