The state of sewage system economics in rural areas in Poland

Infrastructure is the basis of economic activities both in urban and in rural areas. It is also one of main conditions for improving quality of life. Among its most important elements are: water delivery system, as well as sewage treatment network and sewage treatment plants. These devices should create one composite techno-economical system. Non-integrated water delivery contributes to bigger waste of water, and without connection to integrated sewage treatment systems, it can be a serious threat to the environment In Poland, and in rural areas particularly, this situation is highly unsatisfactory. In 2007, share of population connected to water network in rural areas was 73.3%, while for sewage network is was only 21.3%. In many communes, this share was even less than 10%. One can mention a few reasons of this state, mainly: lack of sufficient investment for 40 years after the 2nd World War, big water deficit in rural areas (brought about by droughts and thus, big reduction or decline of water level in shallow homestead wells, being a main water source), big dispersion of rural settlements in the country, limiting economies of scale achievement, and lack of resources available for local authorities. The latter, having not enough resources for infrastructure development, made a decisions to concentrate on water system firstly, while more costly waste management was treated as a second-tier need. In consequence, bigger investment in this field has just started since the half of nineties in the 20th century. Despite this late investment, in December 2007 one could observe that the total length of sewage network was still 4 times shorter than water network. Only 15.5% of rural administrative units were canalized. A quantity of household wastewater purified was 5 times smaller than a quantity of water used. There was also a small number of household sewage treatment plants (figure 4), which can be a good response for dispersed rural settlements. Thus, cesspools (many of them leaking), remain the main way of wastewater collection, being a serious threat for environment. However, there is a hope that this situation will change during next 7 10 years, mainly by obliging Poland to follow the EU Directive 91/271/EEC. This law expects any European Union member state to create, till the end of 2015,more than 2 thousand inhabitants. In Polish National Sewage Treatment Program, almost 1600 administrative units of these kind, were indentified. 1400 of them are totally or partially inhabited by rural community. Releasing this program is, however, determined strongly by local self-government activity and its ability to gain sufficient financial resources for this purpose

Infrastructure coverage of the ural federal district regions: assessment metodology and diagnostic results

The article examines the infrastructure as one of the essential elements in the economic system. The authors consider the development stages of this concept in the scientific community and provide the opinions of a number of researchers as to the role and place of the infrastructure in the economic system. The article provides a brief genesis of approaches to describing the infrastructure and conferring its functions on individual branches. The authors emphasize the higher importance of infrastructure coverage with the economy transition to machine production. Two key methodological approaches are identified to describe the substance and content of the infrastructure: industrial and functional. The authors offer their methodology of assessing the infrastructure coverage of regional-level territories. The methodology is based on identifying a combination of specific indicators the values of which can be used to evaluate the development level of individual infrastructure elements. The indicative analysis being the basis of the methodological apparatus helps make a judgment of any phenomenon by comparing the current observed values with the previously adopted threshold levels. Such comparison makes it possible to classify the observations by the «norm—pre-crisis—crisis» scale. An essential advantage of this method is the possibility of standardizing the indicators, or, in other words, bringing them to one comparable conditional value. Thus, you can get estimates for individual blocks of indicators and a complex assessment for the whole set in general. The authors have identified four main infrastructure elements: transport, communications, public utility services and healthcare. The methodology includes 21 indicators all together. The test estimates based on the authors’ methodology revealed the defects in the development of the Ural regions` infrastructure. The article provides a brief analysis of the obtained data with identifying individual indicators and areas.The research has been supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Project № 14-18-00574)

Regional social infrastructure management in the system of tools used for improving the quality of life for regional population

This paper analyzes the processes in the social sphere and the performance of operating the social infrastructure to improve the population’s quality of life in the Russian regions. Particular attention has been paid to the role of organizational and administrative components, which include the regulation of social infrastructure institutions, planning, and programming that affect the performance of infrastructure facilities utilization. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of social infrastructure management through the congruence of immediate results (dynamics of indicators for social services) and final results (parameters of the population’s quality of life). The working hypothesis of the study was a breach of infrasystemic principle in the infrastructural support for improving the population’s quality of life in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation because of the insufficient effectiveness of public administration. The work on this paper involved using a set of methodological approaches, such as structured, factorial, systemic, and evolutionary approaches, to substantiate the conceptual framework, prepare the method-based approaches, and determine the impact made by the changes in the parameters of social infrastructure facilities on provided services and shifts in the indicators of the population’s quality of life. The paper proposes a method-based approach to quantifying the effectiveness of organizational and administrative components by using the diagnostics of sufficiency in the implementation of infrasystemic principle for the operation of social infrastructure based on elasticity coefficients. The proposed approach and analytical data obtained in the areas, such as health care, education, trade, housing & utilities, culture & sport, allowed ranking the regions of the Ural Federal District and identifying the areas of insufficient effectiveness in the organizational and administrative mechanism used for improving the population’s quality of life as the basis for developing practical recommendations for the executive branch of constituent entities of the Russian Federation and adjustment of socioeconomic policies

ANALIZA RIZIKA KRITIČNIH INFRASTRUKTURA POMOĆU NEIZRAZITE COPRAS

Critical infrastructures play a significant role in countries because of the essentiality of nation security, public safety, socioeconomic security, and way of life. According to the importance of infrastructures, it is a necessity to analyze the potential risks to do not allow these risks be converted into events. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a developed framework with the aim to overcome limitations of the classical approach to build a more secure, safer, and more resilient critical infrastructures in order to develop, implement, control. The proposed framework extends conventional RAMCAP (Risk Analysis and Management for Critical Asset Protection) through introducing new parameters the effects on risk value. According to the complexity of problem and the inherent uncertainty, this research adopts the fuzzy COPRAS (COPRAS-F) as a fuzzy multi criteria decision making technique to determine the weights of each criterion and the importance of alternatives with respect to criteria. Case analysis is implemented to illustrate the capability and effectiveness of the model for ranking the risk of critical infrastructures. The proposed model demonstrates a significant improvement in comparison with conventional RAMCAP.Kritične infrastrukture imaju važnu ulogu u zemljama radi same važnosti nacionalne sigurnosti, javne sigurnosti, društveno-ekonomske sigurnosti i načina života. S obzirom na važnost infrastruktura potrebno je analizirati potencijalne rizike kako se isti ne bi ostvarili. Svrha ovog rada je ponuditi razvijeni okvir u cilju prevladavanja ograničenja klasičnog pristupa izgradnji sigurnijih i izdržljivijih kritičnih infrastruktura s ciljem razvoja, primjene i kontrole. Predloženi okvir proširuje konvencionalni RAMCAP (Analiza i upravljanje rizikom za zaštitu ključnih faktora) uvođenjem novih parametara učinka na vrijednost rizika. S obzirom na složenost problema i inherentnu nesigurnost, istraživanje koristi neizrazitu (fuzzy) COPRAS (COPRAS-F) kao neizrazitu multi kriterijsku tehniku donošenja odluka kako bi se odredila težina svakog kriterija i važnost alternativa u odnosu na kriterije. Koristi se analiza slučajeva kako bi se prikazala sposobnost i efikasnost modela za rangiranje rizika kritičnih infrastruktura. Predloženi model prikazuje značajan napredak u usporedbi s konvencionalnim RAMCAP-om

Publishing Documents In The Scope Of Spatial Planning On The Websites Of Rural Communes In Lodz Voivodeship

The article presents the issue of the accomplishment of records of law in the scope of spatial planning by local authorities. Communes that draw up land-use plans are obliged to publish these documents on the offices’ websites. In the era of the development of information society, it is a crucial element that allows for an increase in the availability of local law for local actors who more than once use the Internet to get acquainted with the spatial policy of a commune. Rural communes are characterized by lower possibilities in the scope of the use of new technologies both as for the availability and the personnel and limited budget. Opportunities in this scope are based on the use of promotional-informational sites, Public Information Bulletin and geoportals to share local documents with the society. The outcomes of the presented research are promising since communes often resign from the obligation to publish land-use plans on websites. Among the units that decide to place plans on the web portals it is not always connected with posting all the documents that are existed in a commune. These observations were the basis for an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon in rural communes

Rola środków unijnych udostępnionych w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Infrastruktura i Środowisko w rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczym podregionów w Polsce

Stymulowanie procesu wyrównywania poziomu rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego między regionami stanowi jedno z podstawowych założeń unijnej polityki spójności. W literaturze podkreśla się, że rozwój infrastrukturalny oraz odpowiedni stan środowiska przyrodniczego należą do głównych czynników rozwojowych. Artykuł zawiera analizę zróżnicowania rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego w Polsce w latach 2007–2013, przeprowadzoną w układzie podregionów, oraz struktury ilościowej i wartościowej zrealizowanych projektów przy wsparciu funduszy unijnych udostępnionych w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Infrastruktura i Środowisko. Podstawowym celem pracy jest określenie wpływu środków unijnych pozyskanych w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Infrastruktura i Środowisko na zróżnicowanie rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego w Polsce w układzie podregionów w latach 2007–2013