Yangtze 'digital twin' helps mitigate impact of flooding

Ships pass the five-tier ship lock of the Three Gorges Project in October. The quality of these dikes is weaker and poses significant hidden dangers during flood defense, said Li Anqiang, deputy chief engineer of the Changjiang Institute of Survey, Planning, Design and Research Corporation of the Changjiang Water Resources Commission. On July 2, having calculated through the digital twin, the Changjiang Water Resources Commission issued warnings that approximately 2,430 kilometers of dikes in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze would exceed the water warning level, spanning Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. To construct a new line of defense, the Changjiang Water Resources Commission used the flood diversion platform of the digital twin to quickly develop a flood inundation risk map and was able to dynamically analyze impact range, losses, population to be transferred and water depth under different scenarios. Li Yi, a staff member at the Changjiang Institute of Survey, Planning, Design and Research Corporation of the Changjiang Water Resources Commission, was quoted by China Central Television as saying: "In late May this year, before the water levels rose, we conducted the first health check on the dikes.