Ecoinformatics Problems of Global Climate Change - New Ecoinformatics Tools in Environmental Science: Applications and Decision-making - page 433

Contrasts in the ecological situation in the cities connected with the socio-
economic factors, are clearly seen with an access of population to objects of san-
itation as an example. People

s security in case of natural disasters depends sub-
stantially on this indicator. The best access to such objects is provided in the cities
of North America (100 % access), Europe (99 %), Australia and Oceania (99 %). A
much lower level of sanitary-hygiene provision is founded in the cities of Africa
(84 %) and Latin America (87 %). A low level of access of city-dwellers to normal
services is in the cities of Asia (78 %), and the worst sanitary conditions are in India
(46 %), Nigeria (61 %), Ghana and Pakistan (53 %).
The cities of the world differ substantially in their waste. For instance, every
year, on average, the cities with populations of 1 million or more in Russia dump
about 3.5 million t of solid and concentrated waste. Its main constituents are
(thousands of tons): wood waste (400), paper (9), textile (8), and glass breakage (3).
Most of waste is in the cities of highly developed industrial countries, such as the
USA and Canada, where per-capita waste is estimated at 2 and 1.5 kg day − 1 . In the
cities of Latin America it is 1.0 kg day − 1 . Of course, of greater importance is not
the amount of waste but possibilities and practice of its processing. In contrast to
the cities of the USA and Canada, where the waste is processed practically com-
pletely, in most of the cities of South America, from 20 to 50 % of garbage are not
removed at all (Gurberlet 2003).
Large cities concentrate a lot of anthropogenic processes on small territories, the
state of which is determined by the ecological, material, sanitary-epidemiological,
social, cultural, political, religious, and other speci

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c features of society. All these

features de ne input variables when determining the danger threatening the city-

dwellers in case of a natural disaster. Clearly, for the optimal growth of cities in
harmony with the environment, will be the development of criteria of the ecological
risk in cities and their indication; and development of an ef

cient system of indicators
of the ecological situations in the cities. At present, there are a lot of such indicators.
As a rule, they concern individual elements of the environment. Examples are
information systems of assessment of the quality and condition of the water medium,
sanitary-epidemiological situation, quality of atmospheric air, etc. Alimov et al.
(1999) undertook a multi-criterial assessment of the medium quality and the state of
the urban ecosystem of St.-Petersburg. Flood (1995) described the system of indi-
cators used by the U.N. having studied more than 100 cities of the world.
Indicators of various phenomena in the cities are ef cient means to analyze and

monitor the interaction between the cities and the environment. Among the indicators
of the ecological situation in the cities, two large groups can be selected. The

rst

group includes indicators of the environment, directly affecting the humans activity

and the ecological situation. First of all, it concerns the indicators of air and water
quality. Such indicators as the area of green plantations are widely used and to a lesser
extent the characteristics of their state. During the last decades emphasis has been
placed on several geoecological characteristics of the urban environment of tech-
nogenic origin. Among them are: the level of noise, radioactive pollution, impact of
local electromagnetic

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fields. The second group includes indicators characterizing the
level of poverty, health, special features of infrastructure, transport, the state of