To thoroughly implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s water governance philosophy of prioritizing water conservation, balancing spatial distribution, pursuing systematic governance, and leveraging both government and market forces, as well as the spirit of his important expositions on water governance, we will steadily advance the development of digital twin water conservancy. Technologies including satellite remote sensing, video surveillance, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and Beidou will be applied to strengthen spatial control over the waters and shorelines of rivers, lakes and reservoirs. On July 16, the Ministry of Water Resources launched the three-year initiative to build an integrated monitoring and perception system for rivers, lakes and reservoirs and issued the Three-Year Action Plan for the Construction of Integrated Monitoring and Perception System for Rivers, Lakes and Reservoirs (2025–2027).

From 2025 to 2027, eight key tasks will be carried out to strengthen spatial control over the waters and shorelines of rivers (including reservoir areas) and lakes, and improve digital and intelligent supervision capacity. The goal is to establish a full-chain monitoring and perception network covering monitoring, analysis, early warning and disposal by 2027, with satellite remote sensing as the mainstay supplemented by video surveillance and UAVs. For the "Four Disorders" of rivers, lakes and reservoirs (unauthorized occupation, illegal mining, indiscriminate dumping and unauthorized construction), activities obstructing river flood discharge and reservoir storage occupation, full-process online management of detection – analysis – early warning notification – disposal feedback will be realized. The eight key tasks are specified as follows:

1. Conduct a basic national survey on rivers and lakes. The Ministry of Water Resources will assign unified codes to rivers and lakes and formulate technical schemes for the survey. Remote sensing images and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) will be used to generate indoor spatial data for rivers with a catchment area below 200 square kilometers and lakes with a permanent water surface area below 1 square kilometer. Based on the indoor spatial data, provincial water administrative departments will verify river and lake spatial data through field surveys, and basically sort out core attribute data including river/lake names, catchment area (permanent water surface area), river length, source location, estuary location, upstream river, affiliated water system, and counties/districts traversed.

2. Improve the data base for river and lake management. The Ministry of Water Resources will promote the association between river-lake spatial data and management data, open system data interfaces, and achieve interconnection of river and lake management data among the Ministry, river basin authorities and provincial authorities. River basin management agencies and provincial water administrative departments will import data such as river and lake management boundaries, shoreline planning, sand mining planning, permitted river-crossing construction projects, key river sections and sensitive waters under river sand mining control, and sand mining permit zones. Information such as river-lake chiefs and river-lake health assessment results will be dynamically updated.

3. Apply large-model-based intelligent models for rivers and lakes. The Ministry of Water Resources will build a sample library of typical ground objects of rivers, lakes and reservoirs using multi-modal remote sensing data from satellite remote sensing, video surveillance and UAVs. It will compile laws, regulations, policy documents, technical standards, permit documents and ground object image patch datasets related to river and lake management to build a river-lake management corpus. Continuous R&D and optimization of large-model-powered intelligent river and lake models will be carried out to support accurate identification of structures, bridges, photovoltaic panels, greenhouses, tall crops, patch forests and other typical ground objects within the management scope of rivers, lakes and reservoirs, as well as monitoring of water body changes. This will support accurate identification of river-lake-reservoir problems and analysis of river drying-up and lake shrinkage.

4. Regular intelligent monitoring via satellite remote sensing. The Ministry of Water Resources will organize full-coverage monitoring of rivers, lakes and reservoirs listed in the national water census inventory (excluding uninhabited areas). Multi-source satellite remote sensing images will be integrated to produce high-resolution orthophoto maps, shared among the Ministry, river basins and provinces through the National River & Lake Chief Management Information System. Intelligent identification and analysis of newly added ground objects within river, lake and reservoir management boundaries will be performed to generate identification results. For major and sudden problems involving encroachment on waters and shorelines of rivers, lakes and reservoirs, satellite resources will be coordinated for continuous dynamic monitoring, and analysis of river drying-up and lake shrinkage will be conducted. Based on intelligent identification results, river basin management agencies will carry out manual analysis for rivers, lakes and reservoirs within their basins, accurately extract and push new ground object patches. They will organize verification of ground object patches for rivers, lakes and reservoirs under central administration and review local verification results within their basins. Provincial water administrative departments will conduct remote sensing image interpretation of newly added ground objects covering rivers, lakes and reservoirs in their administrative regions, and increase interpretation frequency for rivers, lakes and reservoirs prone to the "Four Disorders". They will organize patch verification and problem disposal.

5. Carry out a review ("look-back") on remote sensing image patches of ground objects for rivers, lakes and reservoirs. Provincial water administrative departments will review the remote sensing patches and mark patches of water conservancy projects. For patches of river-related construction projects and suspected "Four Disorders", they will judge the legality of patches and problem rectification status according to formation time, laws and regulations. For patches with unqualified problem judgment or rectification, disposal shall be arranged with clear rectification measures and deadlines to ensure compliance with laws and regulations. River basin management agencies will review ground object patches of centrally-administered rivers, lakes and reservoirs; leverage high-resolution satellite images to conduct sampling inspection on patch review results within their basins and forward unqualified patches to provincial water administrative departments for disposal. The Ministry of Water Resources will organize sampling inspection of patch review results.

6. Enable real-time capture via video surveillance. The Ministry of Water Resources will improve its cascaded video centralized control platform and continuously access local video surveillance resources to support on-demand retrieval of video data. Focusing on rivers, lakes and reservoirs with heavy shoreline management tasks and high flash flood risks, provincial water administrative departments will integrate existing in-sector video resources and actively share resources from the communications, emergency response, public security and other sectors. Where conditions permit, high-coverage, all-weather multi-type high-point video cameras will be deployed in river sections, lake zones and reservoir areas, enabling real-time capture, automatic early warning and automatic push of "Four Disorders", flood-obstructing obstacles and floating debris on water surfaces. Video locations and resources will be connected to the Ministry’s cascaded video centralized control platform (river basin management agencies are responsible for centrally-administered rivers, lakes and reservoirs).

7. Promote regular UAV inspections. The Ministry of Water Resources will upgrade its UAV monitoring service platform and establish a dynamic UAV resource ledger to support aggregation and retrieval of UAV data. Provincial water administrative departments will properly allocate UAV resources for rivers, lakes and reservoirs where video coverage is difficult and management workload is heavy. Regions with adequate conditions are encouraged to build UAV nests for routine inspections to promptly detect "Four Disorders", flood-obstructing obstacles and floating debris on water surfaces, enabling automatic early warning and push of suspected problems. Inspection frequency will be increased as required during flood seasons. UAV information will be dynamically registered on the Ministry’s UAV monitoring service platform (river basin management agencies are responsible for centrally-administered rivers, lakes and reservoirs).

8. Advance intelligent supervision of river sand mining. The Ministry of Water Resources will improve digital and intelligent management functions for river sand mining, and realize correlation, coupling and system integration with electronic permit systems for river sand mining and electronic management slips for river sand extraction and transportation. Big-data-based intelligent supervision will be promoted. Application of Beidou technology for river sand mining supervision will be organized to form technical guidelines for multiple application scenarios. River basin management agencies and provincial water administrative departments will complete system docking for electronic sand extraction and transportation slips. Beidou-enabled sand mining supervision and other work will be implemented to realize on-site control of mining zones, precise output control, linked control of extraction and transportation, real-time problem monitoring and information exchange and sharing.

The Three-Year Action Plan for the Construction of Integrated Monitoring and Perception System for Rivers, Lakes and Reservoirs (2025–2027) adheres to the principles of demand-driven development, application priority, digital empowerment and capacity improvement. After three years of efforts, the integrated monitoring and perception system will cover the full workflow of front-end sensing, platform aggregation and information application, supporting full-coverage, multi-object, high-frequency, high-precision and long-time-series dynamic monitoring of rivers, lakes and reservoirs.

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