Analyzing Spatial Justice of Counties in Ardabil Province Based on VIKOR Model in Terms of Sanitary-Therapeutic Indices

Today’s world depends, more than any other period, on diverse services in line with spatial justice. The reasons for such a dependency lie in increasing urbanization, physical development of cities and the complexity of their space-frame structures, deepening and expansion of the socio-economic division of labor and, finally, spread of infections and diseases related to mentioned factors. Sanitary-therapeutic services is of paramount importance to improve public health and the quality of life. Analyzing spatial justice in the counties of Ardabil Province in terms of sanitary-therapeutic services seems to be the most significant purpose of the current research.

The methodology used in this paper is descriptive-analytical. Library-based method has been utilized for collecting data. For data analysis, firstly a conventional descaling method was applied for normalizing and homogenizing the data. Then, indices weighting was conducted by using Shannon Entropy Coefficient. Lastly, rating the counties of the Province was done based on VIKOR model.

Considering the results and ratings of different counties in Ardabil Province in each index, one can argue that the indices of sanitary-therapeutic services analyzed in this research did not show a just and appropriate distribution among different counties. Put differently, in the counties of Ardabil Province, there are irregularities of distribution of sanitary-therapeutic services centers. The results drawn from the calculations of VIKOR model showed that Ardabil and Parsabad were relatively wealthy counties while Kosar, Nir and Sareyn were known to be deprived ones.