The problem of natural disaster prediction and substantiation of environmental monitoring systems to receive, store and process necessary information for the solution of relevant problems have been analysed. Some specific natural disasters have been studied focusing on the following issues. The human-nature interaction is a function of a broad complex of factors functioning both in human society and in the environment. Anthropogenic forcing of the environment should be assessed together with natural processes, in order to work out a technology to reliably predict the consequences of human activity. One of the causes of natural balance violation is environmental pollution, in particular of the atmosphere. Interactions between processes in the environment is the main mechanism for appearance of emergency situations through the fault of humans. The observed increase of the number of natural disasters is connected with the growing role of anthropogenic factors that determine the environmental conditions for the origin of critical situations. Anthropogenically-induced natural disasters include forest fires, desertification, deforestation, dust storms, floods, snow avalanches and snowslides, reduced biodiversity, etc. An optimization of risk insurance against natural disasters becomes more and more urgent with every passing year, since economic losses increase and become practically more and more poorly predicted.