Analysis of urbanization impact on the dynamics of emergencies and risks for population in Ukraine.

Abstract

Urbanization combined with industrialization as well as economic structural changes causes negative processes in the whole system “City – Environment”. And, thus, it becomes an important factor in shaping the state of the ecological danger of the territory. The purpose of the work was to determine the interdependence between demographic changes and characteristics that reflect the nature of urbanization processes in Ukraine, and the dynamics of indicators of natural and man-made danger. The article shows that the consequences of urbanization for changing the levels of safety of urban areas have not been studied in practice. The study of the dynamics of emergencies of different genesis for the period 1989 – 2017 years, relevant in terms of studying the main factors of natural and man-made danger, and also have practical implications for the development of risk management tools in urban areas. They are also of practical importance for the development of risk management tools in urban areas. Methods of statistical, comparative and graphical-analytical analysis are used for research. It is shown that the rapid reduction of the population of Ukraine, along with the number of urban residents, is a leading factor in reducing natural and man-made emergencies. The polynomial functional dependence between normalized indicators of natural and manmade danger and population density with high correlation coefficient (R2 = 0.94) is established. It was assessed the risks to life and health of the population and studied their changes over the years. The absence of connection of the risks of losing life and health and individual risks of death indicates an ambiguous impact of demographic and urbanization processes on they. It is shown that the individual risk is less dependent on the normalized indicator of population density than the risk of suffering from emergency situations (ES). Trends of both risks are the opposite. The tendency of changes in the field of very small and very large normalized values of population density are inversely proportional. The main reasons for underestimating the risks of emergencies in the urban environment include the way of taking in account of the emergency in Ukraine, the imperfection of regional and urban databases, the underestimation of small and medium-sized disasters and localized phenomena. The methodology of taking into account demographic peculiarities and the rates of urbanization as the determinants of the formation of the state of ecological safety is developed. Proposed practical recommendations for emergency management in the city and minimization of emergencies from the point of view of the specifics of urbanization in Ukraine.