Spatial analysis of the development of townships from the perspective of physical indicators of livability (Case study: the townships of West Azerbaijan province)

This research is more focused on spatial analysis of the development of the townships of West Azerbaijan Province of Iran from the perspective of physical indicators of livability. The present research method is applied from the point of view of objectivity and has a descriptive-analytical nature. Data collection in this research has been done in the form of documents. The data collection tool of the research is two forms of sampling from the statistical yearbooks of the Iran Statistics Center and an expert questionnaire. The analysis of the collected data has been done through VIKOR and OPA decision-making models. The initial matrix of the VIKOR model is formed through the statistics of the existing situation and the initial matrix of the OPA model was formed through the opinion of 8 experts who were selected purposefully. The results of this research show that according to the VIKOR model of ranking the townships of West Azerbaijan province based on the statistics of the current status of livability indicators and criteria in these townships, Urmia township is ranked first and Poldasht township is ranked last. The results of the OPA model indicate that the index of infrastructure facilities and services with a weight of 0.269 has the greatest impact on the physical dimension of livability, and also the ranking of townships indicates that Urmia township is ranked first and Chaldaran township is ranked last. The results of the Kriging model show that Urmia township has the highest physical indicators of livability compared to other townships. By comparing the results of these rankings, it can be pointed out that due to the lack of looking at the statistics and also the involvement of the personal insight of the experts in scoring the physical criteria of livability, different rankings have been obtained from these two models.