Enhancement of Environmental Security in the Religious Cities through Analysis and Zoning of the Assets Attractiveness, Case Study: Mashhad, Iran

Environmental security is defined as tranquility, confidence, and no-intimidation of citizens from any kind of environmental risk and threats (natural and human) which affects the joy, health, presence, and public participation of citizens. In a safe city, safety is provided in urban spaces, and the person in the city feels a sense of security and a lack of risk. In fact, in the safe city, it is tried to minimize risks for citizens. Therefore, today, the world's advanced countries spend a lot of expenses every year to increase the safety and security of their assets, facilities and urban infrastructure against potential risks and economic damages caused by an incident. Since the scope of decision-making is widespread, these countries always seek to explain the challenge in threats from natural and man-made disasters. The risk analysis of critical assets and attractive targets is a management tool in the hands of crisis managers to decide how to handle countermeasures in dealing with potential threats and vulnerabilities. But, the first step in the risk management process of hostile operations is to identify and analyze threats and vulnerabilities that the assets face. Because it seems that investigating and identifying the threats and capabilities of the enemy's weaponry and technology is the prerequisite for the determination of the enemy's abilities and objectives. According to defense experts, the contribution to threats can transform it into an opportunity to acquire defensive power and to neutralize offensive plans of enemies and even to hinder them. This important issue in cities has been considered as one of the human settlements that have long been exposed to many damages caused by an incident. This has been more prominent in cities as one of the manifestations of human settlements that have long been exposed to many damages caused by accidents. In this context, the attractiveness of an asset is a useful measure to calculate the probability of an attack, which is based on estimating various factors indicating the value of the asset for targeting. Because, for the enemy, not all assets have the same value and the value of an asset from the enemy's perspective is the factor that affects the probability of a security incident. Therefore, the analysis and evaluation of the attractiveness of assets in the process of risk management and analysis of threats and vulnerabilities has a significant role. In this study, factors affecting the attractiveness of assets in religious cities for targeting by the enemy were analyzed in order to provide the necessary background for investigating the security risk of assets and enhancing urban environmental security.

descriptive–analytical and survey research methods have been used in this study. Also, research methods of literature review, observation and representation within the context of library and field studies were employed to analyze factors affecting the attractiveness of assets targeted by the enemy, so that the basis for the risk analysis, explaining the consequences, scenarios and determining the assets security risk become available. The questionnaire was also used as a research tool and Friedman test was utilized to analyze the research data. GIS and SPSS software have been used as the data analysis tools. The sampling of this study is highly targeted, and to identify the sample group of 45 people from the statistical population, a snowball sampling method was used. In this context, Mashhad religious metropolis was selected as the case study for this research, due to the unique religious, pilgrimage, and tourism characteristics and its significance and important role in the national development process and achieving the ideal goals of Islamic Republic of Iran.

By using the Friedman test, the importance of assets attractiveness was ranked as the target. These assets with collateral damages have the greatest strategic importance. Then, cultural, belief, symbolic, military, economic, political, and social assets, along with assets in the vicinity of vital assets were, respectively, the most important ones. In addition, the assets of buildings, human resources, urban infrastructure and transit network are more important for the enemy if they have more exclusive monopoly. Moreover, according to the analysis, the attractiveness of assets was graded and presented in the spectral form of attractiveness. After obtaining the amount of attractiveness of assets and its leveling, the location of these assets were displayed on the map. Then, using the analyses made in the GIS software, urban zones were plotted in this factor and the asset map was calculated based on the amount of the attractiveness. Finally, some suggestions have been made to reduce the effects caused by the targeting of attractive assets in religious cities and to promote environmental security in such cities.