The construction of smart water conservancy is one of the important implementation paths and significant indicators of high-quality development of water conservancy in the new stage. Digital twin watersheds are the core and key to smart water conservancy, digital twin water projects are important tasks in the construction of digital twin watersheds, digital twin water networks are important components in the construction of the national water network, and the construction of digital twin irrigation areas is an important part of smart water conservancy construction. It is an effective means to improve the management level of irrigation areas and also the direction of high-quality development of irrigation areas in the new stage.

On April 18, 2023, the "2023 Smart Water Conservancy Construction Summit Forum," hosted by the Smart Water Conservancy Branch of the China Water Conservancy Enterprise Association and the Beijing River and Lake Smart Water Conservancy Technology Center, grandly opened at the Wuhan Eurasia International Convention and Exhibition Hotel. The conference aimed to promote the application of new technologies such as 3S, BIM, digital twins, cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence in water conservancy. It followed the requirements of "demand-driven, application-oriented, digital empowerment, and capability enhancement," comprehensively advancing the construction of data, algorithms, and computing power, and accelerating the construction of a smart water conservancy system with forecasting, early warning, simulation, and emergency plan capabilities. The goal was to further improve the construction, management, and service levels of smart water conservancy, strengthen the exchange of experience and technology among peers, and promote the application of new technologies and products.

The conference, themed "Empowerment through Digital Intelligence: A New Chapter in Smart Water Conservancy," included a main forum, a digital twin special topic, a water conservancy remote sensing (spatial technology) special topic, a smart river and lake special topic, a national water network special topic, and a water conservancy network security special topic. It deeply discussed the innovative development of smart water conservancy informatization planning, design, construction, management, and services, as well as the application and development of new generation information technology in water conservancy. Concurrently with the conference, the "2023 Smart Water Conservancy Construction Technology and Equipment Exhibition" was held.

As a supporting unit of the conference, Boneng Shares was invited to participate in the 2023 Smart Water Conservancy Construction Summit Forum. Qi Huanran, Vice President of Beijing Brilliant Technology Co., Ltd. and General Manager of Chengdu Brilliant Digital Intelligence Technology Co., Ltd., delivered a keynote speech titled "Application and Exploration of Digital Twin Water Conservancy Construction" at the digital twin water special topic report meeting.

Brilliant, as a new infrastructure provider for the metaverse, relies on its independently developed digital twin operating system BLinkOS, combined with years of technical accumulation and experience sedimentation, to create a digital twin solution for water conservancy. This solution is supported by technologies such as digital twins, GIS, BIM, 5G, big data, cloud computing, IoT, AI, and aims to develop modern smart water conservancy, promoting the synchronous delivery of physical entities and digital models.

Smart water conservancy is an approach that integrates the concept of "water conservancy facilities + internet" with technologies such as 5G, IoT, big data, cloud computing, digital twins, and GIS. It achieves comprehensive management across the entire process from planning, construction, management, maintenance, to emergency response through 3D visualization means. It conducts all-scenario, all-time, and all-weather flood control in river basins, water resource management and allocation, remote monitoring, safety analysis, and integrity assessment of existing water conservancy facilities. It enables automatic control of flow, pressure, and equipment such as pumps, valves, and gates, and automatically completes equipment testing, positioning, optimized configuration, operation simulation, training simulation, and emergency simulation. It is characterized by its capabilities in forecasting, early warning, pre-enactment, and emergency planning.

Digital Twin Water Conservancy Solutions

Brilliant's Digital Twin Water Conservancy Solution encompasses basin digital twin applications, water project digital twin applications, and N specific business scenario applications, which is referred to as 2+N. By constructing, rendering, and publishing digital twins of basins and water projects, the solution establishes a three-dimensional visualization application scenario for water conservancy digital twins. Within the digital twin scenarios, it enables real-time display of the evolution processes under various conditions such as flood forecasting, flash flood early warning, and joint scheduling of water quantity and quality. Additionally, it addresses business applications for water projects, including flood control and benefit, project safety, production operations, reservoir supervision, and comprehensive decision-making. Through the construction of model platforms, the formulation of knowledge platform contingency plans, analysis, comparison, iteration, and optimization, the solution ultimately achieves the "four pre" (forecasting, early warning, pre-enactment, and emergency planning) objectives for water project operation and management. It provides knowledge-based support for precise decision-making in water conservancy events and realizes flood control in river basins, water resource management, and allocation.

Implementation Path

Knowledge Platform: The knowledge platform serves as the "algorithm" of smart water conservancy. It utilizes technologies such as machine learning to perceive water conservancy objects and recognize water conservancy patterns, providing an intelligent core for digital twin river basins and digital twin water projects. It supports forward intelligent reasoning and backward causal analysis, achieving a cycle of "data perception – intelligent recognition – knowledge graph construction – deep learning – intelligent decision-making." This cycle propels the self-optimization and operation of digital twin river basins and digital twin water projects, offering support for immediate and precise decision-making.

Model Platform: The model platform is the "algorithm" of smart water conservancy. By establishing a standardized, interface-compliant, and rapidly configurable water conservancy model platform, it simulates water conservancy management activities in the digital space through holographic intelligent simulation, providing simulation and emulation capabilities for digital twin river basins and digital twin water projects.

Data Foundation: The data foundation is the "computational data" of smart water conservancy. By improving spatiotemporal multi-scale data mapping and expanding functions such as 3D display, data fusion, analysis calculation, and dynamic scenarios, it forms a unified foundation data, gathers monitoring data, integrates 2D and 3D, and spans across levels and businesses, creating a smart water conservancy data foundation that enables the digital mapping of all water conservancy elements.

Brilliant's Digital Twin Water Conservancy Solution relies on the basic geographic information data from administrative authorities and the geographic information data of river and lake resources. It supplements the collection of actual terrain and business-specific geographic information data. Based on the actual terrain 3D visualization scenes, it embeds 3D models of key engineering objects, overlays hydrological and meteorological conditions along with video basics and real-time perception information. Utilizing professional water conservancy models combined with visualization models, it intelligently simulates and rehearses the actual processes of flood control and water resource management in river basins. This enables advanced spatiotemporal information simulation and deduction, and through synchronized simulation operation with the real world and iterative optimization of model algorithms, it empowers water conservancy business operations.

Usage Scenarios

River Basin Flood Control

The solution focuses on flood control in river basins and the management and allocation of water resources. It aims to achieve precise simulation and tracking of the entire process of water conservancy management activities based on the digitalization of the river basin and key water conservancy hub project scenarios. Using pre-enactment as a means, it guides the generation of emergency plans to achieve the goal of smart decision-making.

Based on information infrastructure, the solution utilizes 3D simulation technology to construct, render, and map digital twins of rivers, lakes, water conservancy projects, water conservancy management objects, and affected areas, achieving 3D visualization presentation.

The solution is capable of compiling and processing massive hydrological data from river basins, river channels, nodes, reservoirs, water sources, water distribution, and depressions. Through machine learning and intelligent algorithms, it dynamically integrates various hydrological processes such as rainfall, evaporation, runoff production, convergence, evolution, and reservoir regulation, enhancing capabilities in flood simulation forecasting and flash flood early warning.

Decision Scheduling

On the foundation of digitalizing water conservancy scenarios, the solution conducts pre-enactment analysis of flood simulation forecasting, flash flood disaster early warning, and the joint scheduling of water volume and quality under different scenarios. This enables precise decision-making for disaster events and water conservancy project scheduling. It provides real-time 3D visualization of key cross-section water levels, flow rates, directions, project basin water levels, directions, and key hub project conditions, as well as the current status of water volume and quality at key cross-sections. It dynamically displays flood forecasts and early warnings in 3D, and during water diversion periods, it presents the water surface line, storage volume, diversion direction, and water volume allocation information in real-time 3D dynamics. Based on the pre-enactment, emergency plans, and scheduling schemes formed, it assists in real-world water conservancy forecasting, early warning, and engineering scheduling command decisions.

Water Conservancy Projects

Digital twin water conservancy projects include the construction of 3D visual digital twins for project reservoir areas, dam areas, and downstream impact areas, creating digital twin application scenarios. This includes hydraulic structures, associated mechanical and electrical equipment, and metal structures in the dam area.

Based on the L1 and L2 data platforms of the Ministry of Water Resources and river basin management agencies, and using BIM+GIS technology, the L3 data platform for water conservancy projects is constructed. It gathers comprehensive basic data, detection data, business management data, and external shared data of the project to achieve intelligent forecasting and scheduling for flood control and benefit, intelligent analysis and early warning for project safety, intelligent comprehensive management for production operations, intelligent patrol and supervision for reservoir areas, and comprehensive decision support for business applications. Ultimately, it achieves a "four pre" (forecasting, early warning, pre-enactment, and emergency planning) water project operation and management system.

Specific functions include: hydrological monitoring (rainfall monitoring, water level monitoring, flow monitoring, sediment monitoring, soil moisture monitoring); project safety monitoring (deformation monitoring, seepage monitoring, stress strain and temperature monitoring, environmental quantity monitoring, special monitoring); water quality monitoring; soil and water conservation monitoring; security monitoring, etc.

Early Warning and Emergency Plans

The digital twin water conservancy solution can achieve pre-enactment and emergency planning functions. These functions are established and implemented through the data foundation, model platform, and knowledge platform.

River basin and water project emergency plans include: flood forecasting plans, flash flood disaster early warning plans, disaster emergency response plans, project flood control plans, inflow forecasting plans, project scheduling plans, comprehensive emergency plans for production safety accidents, emergency plans for sudden environmental events, lock emergency plans, and on-site disposal plans, among others.

The knowledge platform integrates historical scenarios, pre-enactment plans, and other sample libraries. Historical scenarios record actual forecast warnings, scheduling commands, and evolution scenarios that have occurred in history; pre-enactment plans store and replay, simulate different stages of input conditions for changes in river basins and projects, and the system intelligently matches forecast warning plans and historical similar scheduling scenarios. Using machine learning technology, it continuously analyzes, iterates, and optimizes model algorithms, improving emergency plans to achieve precise decision-making for water conservancy events.

Reservoir Dam Safety Monitoring

Reservoir dam safety monitoring relies on 5G, cloud computing, big data, IoT, digital twins, and other technologies to achieve all-weather, all-scenario unattended automatic monitoring to timely grasp operational conditions, effectively solving the problems of insufficient reservoir management personnel and non-standard management. This includes dam safety monitoring, automatic hydrological and meteorological reporting, remote control of gates, flood discharge early warning broadcasting, real-time video monitoring, inflow and outflow flow monitoring, and online water quality monitoring. It can timely and accurately collect front-end monitoring station data into the database and automatically analyze and early warning, allowing management decisions to be made in a timely manner through platforms and apps.

Reservoir Hydrological and Meteorological Monitoring: Through the digital twin holographic 3D visualization scene, it can monitor real-time information such as water level, flow, and rainfall of the reservoir. The system automatically alarms when the reservoir water level exceeds the flood limit level or is below the dead level, providing technical support for flood control, drought prevention, and decision-making.

Inflow and Outflow Flow Monitoring: The digital twin platform integrates data from integrated flow monitoring stations, monitoring water levels and flow speeds in the upstream river channel and inflow and outflow channels of the reservoir area with radar flow meters, and achieves one-map monitoring in a 3D visualization scene.

Gate Control: By constructing digital twins of gates, it is possible to remotely operate gate opening, closing, stopping, gate opening degree, and PLC power supply, combining video and gate water level flow monitoring functions to achieve on-site surveillance and remote control of gates.

Water Quality Monitoring: By integrating sensors such as PH, water temperature, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, and conductivity through the digital twin IoT integration platform, it obtains relevant data and monitors changes in reservoir water quality in real-time to ensure the safety of water supply.

At the event site, Brilliant  showcased its independently developed digital twin operating system BLinkOS, digital twin water conservancy solutions, and practical application cases, attracting many guests to stop, communicate, and visit.