Indices and indicators of geoenvironmental safety for urban areas

Abstract

The paper analyses the long-term international and domestic experience in the development and implementation of indicators and indices of sustainable development of regions, the quality of the urban environment and environmental safety. At present, there is no any commonly recognized integral environmental indicator. In Russia, indicators and indexes are developed mainly for regions, and to a lesser extent, for cities and urban districts. Widely used environmental indicators are insufficient and they do not cover the geoenvironmental indicators that are part of them and that are necessary for the comprehensive assessment of urban area safety. The conceptual approach to the evaluation of environmental hazards is presented. The development of the geoenvironmental safety index is complicated to a certain extent by the current lack of open-access information in the state statistics necessary for the calculation.