Measuring Levels of Development in Rural Areas of Iran Drawing upon Fuzzy Logic Method

A number of main issues has emerged from development status and the concerned infra structures in the process of area development in Iran, due to the unfavourable national and centralized plannings in recent years. Therefore, it has always been a matter of discussion how to make public investments within areas, and economic sectors and sub-sectors so as to achieve an equitable distribution as well as to decline present imbalances. Variety of aspects of the issue along with its structural complexity appears to be a crucial dilemma to provide an appropriate model for credit distributions. Identification and setting the levels of regions in terms of their advantage rates in social, cultural, and other aspects are assumed a primary step to solve problems caused by the regional imbalances. One of the most recent patterns offered in this field is the fuzzy logic method. This paper tends to determine the degrees of development in sub-districts of two counties named Aq-qala and Bandar-e Torkaman on the basis of the fuzzy logic method, using 49 indices of socio-cultural, economic, and physical development. The results indicate that although the studied sub-districts are almost homogeneous in environmental conditions, they have considerable differences in their levels of development; in addition, their levels of advantages in each one of the mentioned aspects are unequal to each other. The differences, anyhow, call for necessary provision and implementation of purposeful plans and programs to achieve an integrated balanced development of rural areas.