Evaluation of Societal Security in Urban-Regional Scale (Case Study: Cities in East Azarbaijan Province)

14 indices of societal security and Delphi model have been utilized in East Azarbaijan province, and the views of 20 experts on this issue have been weighed in the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Expert Choice software has been used while benefitting from societal security which is among the substantial elements of public life in the urban-regional level. Due to their importance, these issues have been long the center of attention in the province. Being in need of security is of great importance in the whole life of human beings, and affects their behavior. In order to achieve further growth and development, cities need to enjoy various types of security including societal security to be able to function properly. Given the importance of determining development level in regions based on societal security indices, measuring level of access as well as spatial distribution, etc., the present research aims at reviewing and evaluating societal security spatial distribution in the East Azarbaijan province and determining the status of societal security and its spread by towns in the province, at the end some recommendations based on fair distribution of societal security are provided. The present research is of applied type and uses descriptive-analytical method. The relevant data is extracted from the data bank of the province statistics office (data of year 2012), and they are collected through library and document based method. Based on the data, 19 towns have been ranked using three multi-criteria models: Vicor, Electra, Numerical Taxonomy; and at the end average grading is used. The basic hypothesis of the research is that societal security indices distribution and spread is not fair in the province. The results indicated imbalance in societal security distribution in the towns in the province. The findings indicate that based on the average grading of the towns in the province, Varzeghan town and Tabriz city rank the first and the last in terms of enjoying societal security, respectively. Furthermore, at the end of the present research, its hypotheses were analyzed through using SPSS. The higher the number of population, the lower the societal security level. However, there is direct and significant relationship between employment rate and level of literacy in each single town and existing level of security. Hence, spatial planning and introducing proper and executive strategies in order to reach balanced regional development and progress is an inevitable necessity.