Urban Operations Research

 

Definition

Urban operations research (UOR) is a new method to design (plan) a city. One of the most important steps to design a city is precise analysis of existing conditions and planning of future conditions. To do this, different methods have been created that each one has its strengths and weaknesses. Some of these methods are:

SWOT, SWOT A, AHP, ANP, PPS, DEMATEL, TOPSIS, VIKOR, PROMETHEE, ELECTRE, ORESTE, SAW, LINMAP, TAXONOMY, MORRIS, HDI, SIR and DEA.

But UOR could have presented a more comprehensive method to analyze the city and urban spaces. This method is able to solve problem with unlimited parameters and to analyze information with minor error level. In addition, this method is based on scientific reasoning in order to omit personal attitudes in decision making and information summarizing has been considered inside it, too.

Precise analysis and evaluation of urban projects to set them in priorities is another ability of this new method. In this method, to measure the city capability, health analysis of the city is used.

 

UOR analysis process

In this method, the city situation is analyzed by 92 parameters. These analyses are done for different areas and neighborhoods of the city to provide and clear the city situation in these aspects:

  • -          Physical-spatial dimension: Objective component of environment
  • -          Physical-spatial dimension: Subjective component of environment
  • -          Physical-spatial dimension: Operational component of environment
  • -          Socio-cultural dimension: The quality of individual and private territory
  • -          Sociocultural dimension: The quality of public realm and public territory
  • -          Economic dimension
  • -          Environmental dimension
  • -          Management dimension

After doing macro-aspects analyses, micro-aspects analyses should be done to get closer to precise solutions. The main goal of micro-aspects analyses is finding portfolio of projects that the city needs to be improved. By the time the portfolio is defined, some specific projects would be introduced.

To prioritize the projects, impact of the projects on the city health is calculated.