http://en.people.cn/n3/2025/0115/c90000-20266440.html
In recent years, China’s water resources sector has completed 94 construction tasks of digital twin for water resource management.
The construction of a comprehensive water monitoring system covering the Yangtze River basin has commenced, accelerating the formation of a prototype digital twin of the Yangtze River.
A digital twin Yellow River project is advancing and aims at promoting the deep integration of the real-world Yellow River, Yellow River models, and a digital twin of the Yellow River.
In the development of digital twin water networks, a framework for constructing a national backbone water network digital twin has been completed. Progress has been made in the preliminary establishment of a digital twin for the first phase of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project’s central route, and 10 provincial-level pilot areas have achieved practical results in building their digital twin water networks. Efforts are also underway to advance the construction of digital twin water networks at the municipal and county levels.
Regarding digital twin projects, continuous iterative optimization is being carried out for key sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, Xiaolangdi Dam, Danjiangkou Reservoir, and Yuecheng Reservoir. From 2023 to 2025, 49 digital twin irrigation areas are scheduled to be piloted. Besides, by 2025, large and key medium-sized water conservancy projects newly constructed will launch information infrastructure, digital twin platforms, and business application systems.
Digital twin in water conservancy enables more targeted management of rivers and lakes. China’s Ministry of Water Resources has established a national key rivers and lakes ecological flow monitoring and early warning platform. This platform gathers monitoring data such as water levels and flow rates from 283 ecological flow sections of key rivers and lakes. It enables real-time monitoring and early warning for 235 ecological flow control sections across 165 key rivers and lakes, as well as 65 water allocation sections. A national water use management platform has been set up, allowing for dynamic monitoring of violations such as excessive water use, exceeding control limits, and lack of measurement for water users with permits. Up to now, 131,000 online monitoring points and 551,500 offline monitoring points nationwide have been connected to the platform.
In water conservancy engineering construction management system, information from over 40,000 enterprises, more than 1.07 million professionals, and over 420,000 project performance records and credit evaluations in the water resources industry have been consolidated.
In the water resources project operation management information system, electronic archives of over 90,000 reservoirs across nine industries, including water conservancy, energy, and transportation, have been shared.
In the rural water resources and hydropower information management system, basic and operational information for 520,000 centralized water supply projects, 42,000 small hydropower stations, and 7,326 large and medium-sized irrigation areas are updated annually, with a daily average of over 3,000 visits.