Operational Diagnostics, Estimation of the Scale of Damage and Aftermath Reduction of the Stressful Natural Processes - New Ecoinformatics Tools in Environmental Science: Applications and Decision-making - page 737

The MWC block realizes model of surface runoff and gives a possibility to
assess the fl ux E u; k; n; g; d ; t ð Þ of pollutant of type ʾ at the state ʷ with parameter

d:

E ð u; k; n; g; d ; t Þ ¼ S ð u; k; n; g; d ; t Þ Q ð u; k; t Þ k ð n; g; d ; t Þ

where k is the washout coef cient, S is the pollutant concentration in the soil, Q is

the runoff.
ESECEZ functioning needs the series environmental characteristics the mea-
suring of which can be realized in framework of national hydrometeorological
service and derived from satellite data. Islam et al. (2005) demonstrated a means of
receiving monthly time series of SST data from NOAA satellites in the South-China
Sea region.

9.3 Decision Making Under Dependence of Indicators

9.3.1 The Natural Disasters as a Dynamic Category
of Environmental Phenomena

With the development of civilization the urgency of the problem of predicting the
scale of expected changes in the environment, including climate, has grown. First of
all, it is a question of the appearance and propagation of undesirable natural phe-
nomena, which are dangerous (even lethal) for living beings and causing large-scale
economic losses. Such phenomena have been called natural disasters. Disasters are
distinguished between geophysical (earthquake, volcano and dry mass movement),
meteorological (storm), hydrological ( (flood and wet mass movement), climato-

logical (extreme temperature, drought and wild

fl

re) and biological (epidemic, insect
infestation and animal stampede). Economic losses and victims depend on the
disaster subgroup.
In the course of long-term evolution, natural anomalies of various spatial and
temporal scales are known to have played an important role in ecodynamics causing
and activating the regulation mechanisms for natural systems. With the develop-
ment of industry and the growth of population, such mechanisms have changed
considerably and in some cases have become of threatening level. First of all, this is
connected with the growth and propagation of the amplitude of anthropogenic
environmental changes.
Numerous studies of last decades have shown that in some cases the frequency
of occurrence of natural disasters and their scale have been growing, leading to an
enhancement of the risk of large economic and human losses as well as to
destruction of social infrastructure. So, for instance, in 2011, about 332 natural
catastrophes happened over the globe, with victims amount to more than 30
thousand people and economic losses exceeding 360 billion dollars. In 2012, 357
natural triggered disasters were registered. This was both less than the average