The National Technology Initiative (NTI) Center for Advanced Manufacturing Technologies of Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) is involved as a technology coordinator and contractor in a unique federal project to develop a Digital Twin of Russia’s largest and the world’s third largest river basin.
The project was initiated by Governor of Kuzbass in March 2019. 12 regions of Western Siberia and the Urals are involved in the projects’ implementation. It aims at the rehabilitation of the Ob-Irtysh river basin and its main rivers Ob, Irtysh, Tom, Tobol, Miass and Tura.
Ecosystem digital modeling of the great Siberian rivers will help identify the main factors affecting critically the level of anthropogenic impact, find solutions to the problems associated with accumulated environmental damage, and move on to the implementation of systematic measures to rehabilitate water bodies.
In the framework of this large-scale project, which has no analogues all over the world, an enormous technology- and management-related goal was set. It is to establish an integrated water resources management system using the digital twin technology and big data, which will become a decision support tool for the federal and regional authorities, as well as for the industrial water users.
A single platform will allow to promptly identify environmental law violations, to accurately determine sources of pollution, to assess the extent of the damage incurred, and to determine the measures aimed to improve and reduce the anthropogenic impact on water bodies in the future. This project implies the development of a new generation of world-class equipment in accordance with the manufacturing processes changes of the key industrial companies.
Area of responsibility of the SPbPU Advanced Manufacturing Technologies Center of the NTI will include the following:
- Development of a “Digital Shadow” of the river basin via a system of collecting and processing multimodal streaming information created within the framework of the project and based on the Internet of Things methodologies (e.g., data from the modern gauging stations which are ground-based measuring facilities with automated information inflow in real time; Earth remote sensing and monitoring data from unmanned aerial vehicles; setting up a data and knowledge base on the dynamic condition of the rivers and determining environmentally safe areas, areas of environmental concern and zones of environmental disasters).
- Development of a Smart Digital Twin of the river basin as a technogenic-natural feature with the identification of anthropogenic impact critical indicators. Forming a matrix of critical indicators and constraints will allow to move on to the predictive digital modeling of water body condition.
The project aims to develop a user friendly digital system of the Ob-Irtysh river basin water bodies management. The system will be highly adequate to water bodies and will include intelligent digital services with various functionalities and interfaces:
- international interface, a system for monitoring the impact on water bodies condition by each country, for prompt detection, factor analysis and effective localization of pollution, as well as control of its rehabilitation;
- federal interface, a system for long-term planning of activities on the conservation and rehabilitation of water bodies. This system is supposed to set a link between environmental permits, fines and sanctions, and digital model of the natural feature;
- regional interface, a management interface for the implementation of the regional environmental standard;
- natural resource users interface, a management interface which includes data on specific natural resource users and focuses on their manufacturing processes and environmental impact on the water body;
- public interface, an online service for the public informing about the environmental condition of the river system.
Implementation of the project is planned within the framework of the “Ecology”, “Science”, “Education”, “International Cooperation and Exports” national projects and the “Digital Economy of the Russian Federation” national program. The project was supported by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation, Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation, the Federal Service for Supervision of Natural Resources, the Federal Fisheries Agency, the Analytical Center under the Government of the Russian Federation and the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. Interaction with the working groups of the National Technology Initiative was organized, including “Technet” (advanced manufacturing technologies). The SPbPU Advanced Manufacturing Technologies Center of the NTI is implementing the Technet roadmap.
The Institute of Computational Technologies, the Institute for Water and Environmental Problems of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the SPbPU Advanced Manufacturing Technologies Center of the NTI are research and technology coordinators and developers of the project. Rostec State Corporation is the main technology partner of the project.
The project will be an important step in developing the integrated water resources management system on a new quality level. Later on the project can be scaled up and replicated across other water bodies in Russia and abroad.
