Contributed by: Science and Technology Office | Edited by: Liu Ye | Preliminary Review: Wang Wenchuan | Final Review: Liang Lili | Date: May 29, 2024
Vice President Professor Liu Xuemei Attended the Salon at the Opening Ceremony
Vice President Professor Liu Xuemei Chaired the "Water Knowledge Platform and Applications" Parallel Session
From May 27 to 29th, the 15th International Conference on Hydroinformatics was held in Beijing. It was co-hosted by the Ministry of Water Resources of the People's Republic of China, the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR), and the International Water Association (IWA). The China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research served as the leading organizer, with our university and other institutions co-organizing the event. Key attendees of the conference's opening ceremony included Wang Daoxi, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Water Resources of the People's Republic of China, Philippe Gourbesville, President of IAHR, Li Hong, Director of the Asia-Pacific Region for IWA, and Gabriele Freni, Chairman of the Joint Committee on hydroinformatics and Professor of Kore University of Enna in Italy, and delivered speeches. Vice President Professor Liu Xuemei was invited to lead a delegation to the opening ceremony and chair the "Water Knowledge Platform and Applications" parallel session. Our university was the only domestic institution invited to participate in the opening ceremony salon, demonstrating our academic influence in hydroinformatics and highlighting our active participation and contributions to international academic exchanges.
At the opening ceremony on May 27, Professor Liu Xuemei participated in the salon and delivered a speech. She summarized China's construction of digital twin system for water resources management with the keywords "remarkable achievements" and "arduous task." Professor Liu pointed out that since 2021, the Ministry of Water Resources had successively issued a series of documents on the construction of digital twin system for water resources management. These documents had played an important guiding role, from top-level design to specific implementation. The Ministry had compiled digital twin construction plans for 7 major rivers and 11 key water resources management projects, initiating 94 pilot tasks, significantly advancing the progress of China's construction of digital twin system for water resources management and achieving notable results. However, she also acknowledged the challenges in building a highly complex, open, and dynamic digital twin system for water resources management, indicating that many issues still need to be resolved. Therefore, she proposed that future construction of digital twin system for water resources management should focus on the four critical areas of "twinning, forecasting, intelligence, and wisdom" to enhance its advancement further, capabilities to make forecasts, issue early warnings, conduct simulations and draft contingency plans, as well as its intelligence. Professor Liu introduced our university's basic practices in talent cultivation, emphasizing that the digital twin system for water resources management, as an emerging interdisciplinary field, had a pressing demand for talent. As a university with industry characteristics, we had always closely integrated water resources management talent training with industry needs, striving to improve the quality of talent training to support the construction and development of digital twin system for water resources management. She called for participants in the global field of digital twin system for water resources management to strengthen cooperation, jointly promote the construction, application, and talent training of digital twin system for water resources management, and together embrace a bright future.
On the morning of May 29, our university organized the "Water Knowledge Platform and Applications" parallel session of the 15th International Conference on Hydroinformatics. Professor Liu Xuemei chaired the conference. Our university's Wang Lihu and Han Wenhao were invited to give keynote speeches, while Li Hairui delivered an oral presentation. This session showcased our latest achievements in the construction and application of water knowledge platforms, and representatives engaged in further exchanges and discussions with experts and scholars from around the world.
The International Conference on Hydroinformatics, initiated by the Joint Committee on Hydroinformatics established by IAHR and IWA, was a series of international academic conferences held biennially on a rotating basis on different continents. Since its first successful session in the Netherlands in 1994, 14 sessions had been held, establishing it as an important regular exchange mechanism in international hydroinformatics. The theme of this conference was "From Nature to Digital Water: Challenges and Opportunities," featuring subtopics such as "Sky-Space-Surface" integrated monitoring," "Hydrological and Hydraulic Modeling and Solutions," "Big Data Acquisition and Data Management," "Multi-Scenario Applications of Digital Twins," "Climate Change and Adaptation," and "Digitally Empowered Water Management and Education." The conference brought together policymakers, experts, scholars, and industry representatives from the water sector worldwide to explore the application of new-generation information technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing in water resources management. Nearly 500 representatives from government departments, universities, research institutions, international organizations, and water-related enterprises from 34 countries and regions attended the conference.