Although Iran has a strategic position in the Middle East and there are threats of neighboring and non-neighboring countries, projects and economic infrastructures have been established without proper defensive considerations and are targets for enemy threats and other offensive actions. The present study is an applied and developmental research that aims to study and scrutinize the vulnerability of infrastructures in Ardabil province from the perspective of passive defense. Moreover, analytic network process (ANP) approach is used in GIS environment with elements of physical and biological environment, accessibility, and infrastructures in order to carry out the research. The results of spatial pattern analysis and vulnerability zoning show that the spatial distribution of infrastructure in Ardabil province is cluster type (non-dispersive) and in terms of vulnerability, 7% of Ardabil province is located in highly vulnerable areas which are themselves among the most densely populated places with high amounts of established infrastructures. This is due to poor physical indicators and lack of sufficient managerial, industrial, and military institutions in these areas of the Ardabil province.

Land cover always has changed due to human activities and natural phenomena,. Intensive and variety of these changes in urban environments are more than others. The objective of this research was assessment of the temporal and spatial changes for two coastal cities (Chalus and Babolsar) and two non-coastal cities (Ghaemshahr and Amol) in Mazandaran province with the view to compactness, complexity and centrality of urban form using landscape metrics. The research methodology was a quantify method and the land use maps were produced in three classes (urban, cropland and water) by maximum likelihood classificationusing Landsat satellite images. For landscape change analysis 12 landscape metrics were used in the class and landscape level. The results show that the NP for cropland in four cities increased, which represent fragmentation, loss of continuity and interference in cropland. Additionally, increasing trend of number of patches was observed in two cities Ghaemshahr and Babolsar in landscape level that showed fragmented structure in these cities. Also, ENN-MN decreased only for Ghaemshahr that means high centralization was occurred in this city. Generally, the significant difference was not observed between coastal and non-coastal cities with the view to compactness and complexity.

Planners always face a set of spatial conflicts in allocation of land to a particular activity; this implies that a land may be used for two or more parallel applications. Currently in Town and Country Planning programs recognizing priorities in the land allocation process are modeled independently without considering the role of other land uses, and as potential land-use conflicts are an issue that has been ignored. The purpose of this study is to introduce and use the LUCIS model to identify land allocation priorities along with conflict modeling. To implement the model, with using the Python programming language an ArcGIS toolbox has been developed. Due to the developed system, defining inputs, weights and stakeholder priorities, land use modeling will be done automatically. Finally, priorities and also major conflicts in the study area have been identified. Results of this study show that, in addition to having the capabilities of other models in land suitability analysis, LUCIS can properly model existing conflicts. Therefore, it is recommended that a separate part under title "Identification of land suitability conflicts"  be specified in the descriptive setting of Town and Country Planning programs.

Plan quality evaluation has turned to a significant approach considered by the urban studies both in order to help the success in implementation of the plan and to make better plans. Thus, the current study evaluated the "Master Plan of Pooladshahr City" as case study and used a framework for evaluation of quality of urban development plans based on the synthesis of Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) and Analytic Network Process (APN) methods. In fact, after extracting indicators of theoretical studies, the network connections between indexes is built using ISM and its output becomes as an input in the evaluation process of ANP. The most shortcomings of this plan can be considered as lack of public participation in plan preparation process, lack of use of scientific methods and local values in visioning, and adapting it with all the elements of the plan besides lack of indicators for monitoring the success. Although the efforts of the plan producers for inclusion of such concepts as sustainable development, urban competitiveness, public participation, etc. in a reasonable methodology which cannot be seen in the conventional service description of planning has been significant,  it has not been much considered by the plan itself.

The diverse forces for location of coastal lands and the complexity of different and contradictory interests of these spaces asked new public management to cooperate with public sector and this was the beginnings of privatization of coastal lands. The review of experiences in different communities, shows the main discourses for creation of coastal exclusive spaces, including security, consumption and culture. This research aims to explore the categories of exclusive spaces in a case study and develop the current conceptual framework for the coastal exclusive spaces in pre-urban areas. With applying case study research strategy and the qualitative method approach, the documentary analysis method was used in which the coding technique analyzed the data, gathered from interviews, documents and local observation. It is found that security and culture does not make sense in the case study but for consumption, there is another category and that is the exclusive spaces created under the discourse of public good consumption with the support of governmental and state forces.