Spatial analysis and safety assessment of social and economic development of small and medium cities

The article discusses the spatial patterns of socio-economic development of small and medium-sized cities in the Volgograd region. We know that small and medium-sized cities as spatial socio-economic systems are not only the support frame of settlement, but the main “engine” of innovative impulses for the surrounding periphery. The scientific novelty of the study consists in the effort to implement a spatial approach to the assessment of the economic security of small and medium-sized cities (SCR). The content of the economic security of cities is determined by two system characteristics of the socio-economic system: economic activity (EA) and quality of life (QL) of the urban population, or SCR = F (EA; QL). For finding spatial patterns in GIS, great interest is in investigating the environment of each city by calculating the local statistical characteristics of geo-variability which allow assessing trends of spatial variation of the six components of security (human security, technosphere safety, environmental safety, etc.), local variations in emissions and their values indicators Ki. The successful solution of these problems is possible with the use of tools of exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) in ARCGIS, and in particular, the Voronoy maps. The spatial approach has allowed to perform an integrated assessment of the economic security and to evaluate safety risks in small and medium-sized cities of the Volgograd region with the security system of indicators.