The Foresight of Infrastructural Development of the City of Ardabil with the Integrating Approach of Scenario Planning and the Analytical Models of SOWT and QSPM

Abstract

The main aims of the present research are to determine the possible scenario of infrastructural development in the city of Ardabil and develop effective strategies according to the integration of the results of using Delphi method through SWOT and QSPM analyses. Scenario planning is the main tool applied to the research. First, according to the 6 steps of scenario planning, the method of selecting the respondents of Delphi questionnaire and their combination as well as entering the data into MicMac software were operated and by forming the SWOT matrix, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of suggested scenarios were ranked and prioritized. In the final step, different strategies were studied through the quantitative strategic planning matrix (QPSM) and the best strategy was selected. Finally, 7176 mixed scenarios were extracted, which included all the possible future situations ahead of the urban development foresight of Ardabil. Among these, 22 scenarios were highly compatible, 7012 were poorly compatible, and 142 scenarios were incompatible. The final results indicate that 5 scenarios are more possible in the urban development of Ardabil. Of the 5 strong scenarios, 3 scenarios are more possible to occur in the future urban development in the city of Ardabil. Among these 3, two scenarios are of favorable and ideal conditions and one scenario has a relatively favorable and interstitial state. The suggested scenarios in this paper indicate that the city of Ardabil has different possible situations to achieve the urban development in infrastructural terms. Best scenarios to achieve the favorable goals are strong ones which are more possible to occur. Among the large number of scenarios in the present paper, 5 strong scenarios were selected that 3 of them have presented optimistic situations and 2 scenarios have forecast pessimistic situations. Since pursuing the aim in this research is based on a positive attitude, positive strategies have been presented to achieve optimistic scenarios.