Assessing Security Feeling Level in Structure of Urban Neighborhoods Using COPRAS Model (Case Study: Ahwaz City)

Security is a social concept and its application in a way makes sense when urban communities are concerned. In the absence of security feeling, no urban space will be visited by citizens and they will not interact with others in it. According to the approach of sociology of security, analyzing security while disregarding social factors cannot be of any help. Therefore, this study seeks to examine the extent of urban security in selected neighborhoods in Ahvaz and to provide solutions to eliminate insecurity in the relevant neighborhoods. The research is of descriptive-analytical type. In the present research, following looking into the relevant theoretical foundations, constituents such as "land use, passages quality, environment comfort, public transport and environment discomfort" came out to be indicators of urban landscape based on assessing public citizens' security feeling. Afterwards, by distributing 10 questionnaires among experts, the required data were collected and following that entropy method was used to assess the security indices. Then, the COPRAS model was used to rank the selected neighborhoods in Ahvaz. The research results indicate that according to the assessment indices, there is a very lively and dynamic neighborhood in Zone 2 of the western part of Ahvaz which enjoys many facilities, while in the central part of Ahvaz, in district 1 and also in the western part of Ahvaz, the neighborhoods of district 6 are in undesirable conditions and have poor urban security and are considered the most deprived neighborhoods as far as security feeling indicators are concerned.