The growing role of science and technology in economic development makes the necessity of policymaking and planning for the science and technology system more important. In line with centralized, top-down planning approaches to science and technology policymaking, the spatial planning approach is a bottom-up effort to identify regional capacities and potentials in order to provide an endogenous and balanced model for the development of science and technology. Although the spatial planning approach in its general form has a multi-decade history in the planning literature, the optimization of this approach in the science and technology governance needs methodological innovations. The purpose of this study was to provide a science and technology spatial planning methodology using institutional mapping. To this end, we used two cross-sections. On the one hand, we took into account innovation within a regional system, and on the other hand, we adopted the institutional mapping to attain a method for its analysis and estimation. In this system, first the institutions of the science and technology institution including the science institution, the technology institution, and the market institution were identified, and then the interconnection capabilities of these three institutions and their subsidiaries were evaluated. This was done through the extraction of the similarity graph. The similarity graph, which was obtained through the quantification of binary relationships of the science and technology system sub-institutions, expressed the diversity and intensity of the connections of each institute with other institutes. The more diverse and intense the relationships among the institutions were in general, the more optimal the science and technology system would be. Ultimately, observing this graph, the policymaker can design a scenario for moving toward regional balance for each of these institutions so that in the predetermined chronological horizons, the institutional proximity is increased and the agreement and accord of the institutions are enhanced.

It has been years since innovation was first introduced as a driver of economic development. In addition, after a decade of attention to the regional innovation system policies in the Yazd province, this approach has not shown any positive effect on the development of the province. Thus, this study set out to provide a suitable model for the regional innovation system development in Iran following the investigation of the Yazd province as a case study. To this end, this study used the exploratory factor analysis and relative importance index to identify and analyze the key factors effective on the development of regional innovation system. The findings obtained from the opinions of experts and actors of this field showed that the three factors of human resources; the Science and Technology Park; and growth, innovation, and creativity centers in Yazd Province have the highest importance among all studied factors. This reveals the concentration of finances, policies, and projects on these factors and ignorance of other factors. In the light of the importance and the designated priorities, the factors of innovation system in Yazd province were classified into five groups. These included human and social resources, innovation infrastructure, innovation processes, business dynamics, and endogenous development. It can be concluded that so far, the concentration has been on the elementary stage of regional innovation system model – which essentially functions as the input for the system – and the innovation system in Yazd province is in its early stages. Accordingly to the obtained model of the study, the regional innovation system development in Yazd province needs concentration on the three groups of factors, i.e., innovation processes, business dynamism, and endogenous development.

The development of urbanization in accordance with environment is an important issue for sustainability. A correct understanding of the relationship between urbanization and environment is highly vital for the coordinated development of both systems. In recent decades, the expansion of urbanization and manmade infrastructure without taking into account the environmental resources has been increasing. This has led to numerous consequences such as the reduction of environmental resources and the escalation of environmental pollution, and has severely endangered the future of sustainable development in Khorasan Razavi province. In the study at hand, the balance among urbanization and environment subsystems was examined using the coupling coordination degree model in the cities of Khorasan Razavi province. The ranking of cities was done based on the coupling coordination degree scores. Based on the scores of cities in each subsystem, the cities were divided into four areas, namely areas under urbanization pressure, areas under environment pressure, areas under dual pressure, and areas under no pressure, and the relationships between the coupling coordination degree and the areas were compared. The results showed that Gonobad (.66) and Dargaz (.62) cities have achieved the highest balance score and have been classified in the primary balance group. On the other hand, Khoshab (.36), Mahwelat (.38), and Davarzan (.39) cities had the lowest rate of balance and were classified in the average imbalance group. While the majority of the cities located in the areas under double pressure and environment pressure were classified in the low imbalance group, most of the cities located in the areas under no pressure and urbanization pressure were grouped in the near-to-balance category. Overall, based on the calculations made in this study, the coupling coordination degree has been increasing from dual pressure area to area under environmental pressure, then to the area under urbanization pressure, and finally to the area under no pressure.

After the implementation of the contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces as the driver of economic growth and the long-term development of cities and regions, this idea has come under criticisms, especially due to its compliance with capitalist structures. In practice, the problem is that the attractiveness of life, work, and recreation in these spaces is purely accompanied by the consideration of the needs of creative layers of society with a mercantilist view and through sacrificing many primarily qualitative and secondarily contextual indices. Therefore, although these recently found arenas have received positive global attention, they face some challenges. One of these challenges is the low quality of places in the neighborhoods entailing contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces. Therefore, the purpose of this study was the attainment of qualitative factors of the placemaking mechanisms and urban policymaking of contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces as well as the development of the existing conceptual framework to respond to the criticisms in this regard. The research method was the qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the related documentary data and provision of an answer to the nature of the palcemaking factors using unlimited classical meta-analysis of Persian and English resources, including the scientific-research articles, theses and dissertations, books, and reports, and then coding and counting the frequency of the analysis units. At the end, the meta-analysis of the resources led to the identification of 21 conceptual labels for contemporary knowledge and innovation spaces in the form of four dimensions of characteristic, form, performance, and image. Consequently, it seems that consideration of the requirements of placemaking the related spaces – including accessibility, participation, investment, acceptance, social liveliness, dynamism in activities, and integration – can help increase the quality of knowledge and innovation spaces in the contemporary era.

The purpose of this study was examining the course of development of Qazvin urban area in order to optimize the decisions of related authorities to enhance sustainable spatial efficiency and exploitation. Through a meta-analysis, four urban area perspectives were extracted, including natural-cultural, administrative-political, functional, and communicative. This was then followed by a theoretical conclusion. GIS spatial statistics were used for the analysis purposes. The results indicated the presence of only the physical and political perspective. The administrative-political perspective of urban area (as the only formal area) and functional urban area (only in an informal manner) were identified as the urban perspectives of Qazvin. The investigation of the natural-cultural perspective of Qazvin urban area led to the identification of southern Alborz area, which based on water resources approximately conforms to the political borders of Qazvin province. Due to its use as a crossroads, this area does not have cultural coherence, and its closeness to the political capital of Iran has made its environmental conditions critical and has changed the role of this area. To solve these problems, it is suggested that first an ecological planning is done as the basis of spatial planning and development decisions. Moreover, due to the cultural inconsistency of Qazvin area, it is suggested to adopt creation of identity through regional governance. Moreover, the economic areas resulting from functionally connected areas should be enhanced and directed in the light of the ecological conditions of the area. Although the application of neo-regionalism viewpoint at transnational level is not possible due to the specific political conditions of Iran, its application in regional and local levels seems to be unavoidable in order to reduce ecologic crisis (water resources) and enhance identity creation in Qazvin urban area.

Investigating the changes in groundwater aquifers in planning the sustainable management of water resources in each region is of particular importance. Therefore, reducing the level of groundwater aquifer changes requires proper management and planning to exploit water resources. In this study, the level of groundwater aquifer changes in Urmia Lake basin was examined for the period from 2002 to 2017 using GRACE satellite data (JPL, GFZ, CSR triple bands, CRI Filtered model, time and space filter, and Lew-Thiknth uncertainty dry product) in the Google Earth Engine. The results of the triple bands showed that the JPL band estimated the average level of groundwater aquifer changes on May 1, 2004 as 14.947 cm, while the GFZ band on estimated this as -30.558 cm on September 1, 2015 and the CSR band estimated this amount as -28.206 cm. Therefore, CRI Filtered model can very accurately identify the boundary between land and water zones. The results showed that this model estimated the maximum thickness of liquid water in the groundwater aquifer at March 31, 2002 as about 11.599 cm and its uncertainty at about 9.767 cm. It can be said that the least amount of thickness of liquid water is estimated on 13 August 2015 as 12.309 cm with an uncertainty level of 10.759 cm. According to the results, the level of groundwater change in aquifers in terms of liquid water thickness parameter (Lew-Thiknth) in the northern parts of the Urmia Lake basin and in terms of uncertainty in the northeastern part of the Urmia Lake basin is experiencing a strong decline in the aquifer water levels.

One of the main challenges in the energy transmission arena (especially the natural gas transmission) in Iran is the optimal demarcation of operational boundaries in order to cover the whole land. In other words, over time and due to the changes in the consumption level and the facilities installed in the related areas, the boundaries defined as the operational areas have lost their optimal response potential, and there have appeared challenges such as more difficult access, increased volume and importance of transmission, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to define and demarcate new boundaries based on these changes. As a result, this article addressed the optimal model for the demarcation of natural gas transmission operational areas using spatial allocation method. Spatial allocation method is an instrument for maximum optimization and high access in various algorithms. The spatial allocation methods that are usually used for positioning stations and work facilities are a great instrument for planning the public services. In this study, in line with using comparative studies and external experiences, instruments such as interview (for the determination of indices), statistical tests in GIS, weighing methods, etc., were used. According to the obtained results, the number of yards and areas should be fixed, but the boundaries of the operational natural gas transmission areas and yards should be mobilized maximally to match the defined scenario so that maximum optimization is achieved.

The intelligent managers of this era of constant changes and instability try to know opportunities, challenges, and variables effective on the system under their management so as to increase the possibility of their success. The managers of Yazd province – as one of the developed provinces of Iran – always try to step in the direction of sustainable growth and development by means of strategic planning, knowledge about the capacities of this province, and the management of the possible future challenges. The study at hand was carried out to attain this objective and to get a clearer image of the future of this province in order to identify the variables that are affective on the future of Yazd province. Moreover, conducting structural analysis through MICMAC method, it was tried to investigate the mutual effects of these variables on each other and identify the key drivers of what might form the future of this province. The important variables effective on the system were identified using library research, virtual space monitoring, surveying citizens, and future-related workshops. Variables were prioritized using importance and lack of certainty criteria. Then, the most important ones were fed into the direct effects matrix, and after completion with Delphi method, they were fed into MICMAC software. The outcome of the software was compared with the results of Dimtel method, and finally, the variables of the performance of organizations, balanced development, performance of land use plan, various types of tourism, and attention to water and environment were identified as the most effective variables in the formation of the future of the province.

Today, ecotourism is deemed a key industry and is granted a special position in the economic development of different countries. This industry has always faced risks in making decisions about selecting places with high ecotourism potential. Therefore, the purpose of this study was the assessment of ecotourism development capability in rural areas, with an emphasis on the environmental risk-taking in decision-making. In this study, 12 spatial criteria were used. Ordered weighted average (OWL), analytic network process (ANP), TOPSIS, and sensitivity analysis were used to assess the concept of decision-making risk, calculate the weight and importance of the criteria, rate the appropriate villages, and assess the modeling precision, respectively. The results showed that among the used criteria, the distance from the built lands and the distance from faults have the highest and lowest weight, respectively. With the increase and decrease in the risk-taking degree, the high potential class space increases and decreases, respectively, such that in the risk-taking degree of 0 or less, less than one percent and in the risk-taking degree of 1, thirty-five percent of all lands of the area fall in the “very high potential” class. The examination of the appropriate villages in the 0.5 risk-taking degree for ecotourism development showed that among all Mazandaran province villages, only 55 villages are in the “very high potential” class. Among these, Aali Kola with the relative distance of 0.8505 is the most capable village for ecotourism development. Finally, the results of sensitivity analysis revealed the adequate stability of the model results in various scenarios, i.e., the high reliability of the model results.

One of the principles of sustainable urban development is equal access of all citizens to the required services. Basically this matter comes true when different urban lands and resources, equally allocate to the spatial and social units of the city.Sincecommercial and service land uses are used by city dwellers daily, their locating and spatial distribution in cities is very important. Proper distribution of chain stores plays a significant role in reducing transpotation costs, quick supply of goods and services, suitable access to parking and other urban supplementary services. A chain store consists of several co-owned and centralized retail stores. The purpose of this study is improvement on spatial distribution of chain stores in Tabriz. To this end, first, the indicators of chain stores locating identified through available resources and documents and then through quantitative and spatial analysis methods using GIS capabilities, distribution of chain stores in urban areas of Tabriz was studied. Six criteria including population, type of communication, centrality, compatible uses, local equilibrium and radius of access have been used for a comprehensive analysis. After preparing the layers related to the above parameters using analytical tools in Arc Map software, they were integrated and the final layer was extracted. The results show that the distribution pattern of chain stores in Tabriz is random and it doesn't have a specific pattern. Also, the location criteria for the current stores have not been met in a desirable manner.