Environmental risk management of urban growth poles regarding national importance

Urban settlements of regional importance from Romania impose within the national settlements system by their ability to converge material and human flows, leading to important unbalances in the relationships between the components of territorial systems. The status they held, both in the communist period and at present, made the economic activities developed in a short time exceed the adapting ability of the other components of the territorial system, the natural environment strongly feeling the industrialisation pressure. Identifying the specificities of the environmental risk management at the level of development poles of regional importance was done by detailed analyses accomplished in Craiova, a representative town for the high concentration of economic activities strongly pressing upon the natural environment. The construction of the model of environmental risk management supposes the classifying of risks by a series of criteria, a model which constitutes a useful instrument for the decision factors. The management of unbalances from the territorial systems determined by industrialisation is one of the major preoccupations of the decision factors from Romania, in order to be aligned to the European environment standards.