Reduction of environmental risk of industrially developed territory through the early warning system: the example of northern and arctic territories of The Russian Federation

Abstract

Within early warning and technological hazards, the need to notify, and to identify, assess and provide the necessary information about the sources of potential hazards is of particular importance. Since there may be causal links between natural and technological disasters, there are increasing concerns that the available knowledge base does not allow for timely warning or relief measures for many hazards.Any early warning system aims to reduce risk as a measure of potential environmental and economic damage. Such reduction, as a rule, is achieved by continuous study of information on the state of functioning of the naturaltechnical system. Hence the task of systematic collection, accumulation, processing and analysis of information arises. The system of continuous observation, control and analysis of the environmental situation for subsequent diagnosis and forecasting of the state of natural objects is realized within the framework of monitoring, which is performed at three levels – global (planetary), regional and local.The Sakha Republic (Yakutia) is the largest region of the Russian Federation with a highly concentrated natural-resource potential, providing full-scale projects of national economic development of interregional and federal significance. Yakutia, the area of which is 20 % of Russia’s territory, is a giant natural enclave in geotechnical terms, the administrative boundaries of which cross many geographically heterogeneous ecosystems of seven neighboring territories (administratively independent subjects of ownership). The article considers and reveals the main directions of the early warning system to prevent socio-natural risk as applied to Yakutia, taking into account its natural-territorial uniqueness.