Ways of Improving the Environmental Safety of Urbanized Areas: Technologies and Innovations

Abstract

The paper describes a technique for identifying appropriate environmental technology options for populated areas. Based on the method of analysis of hierarchies (MAI), a methodical approach for determining the priority technologies of phytoremediation for the treatment of various types of wastewater from settlements has been developed. The developed approach makes it possible to involve experts in environmental, urban planning, social, and economic direction of municipal management bodies of a specific settlement, industrial, residential, and military facilities, where the construction of treatment facilities is planned, to justify decisions in the management of environmental safety of surface water bodies located near the specified settlements. According to the developed approach, criteria formulated as influencing groups of factors reflecting: input and output parameters of the cleaning system were proposed and used; circumstances that exist in the place where treatment facilities are planned to be built, and requirements that directly relate to phytoremediation technologies. Relevant experts, relying on various types of information (data of direct measurements, statistical and predictive estimates) on the specific purpose and location of treatment facilities, give their own judgments regarding the priority of the advantages of the specified criteria. Expert judgments are processed according to the formal procedure of the MAI, which is implemented on a computer, and is the basis for decision-making when choosing the priority technology of phytoremediation in specific conditions. The multi-criteria hierarchical structure of phytoremediation technology selection is represented by a sequence of actions that include the following stages: development of elements of a methodical approach; verification of the consistency of the proposed hierarchical structure for determining priority technologies based on the input data of several objects of settlements; obtaining data on the priority of phytoremediation technology for implementation on these objects. The advantages of the proposed methodical approach should include the possibility to link to a single algorithm for the justification of the required decision data that differ both in their content (ecological, biological in terms of higher aquatic plants, urban planning, social and economic) and in the form of presentation (data of direct measurements, statistical and predictive estimates). Keywords: environmental safety, system approach, technologies, tools and ecological and economic aspects of environmental protection activities, environmental quality, processing of eco-data, regulatory framework.