Published on: 2026-05-22
Source: Saint Petersburg Polytechnic University of Peter the Great –
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The II International Scientific and Practical Conference “Modern Approaches in Systems Engineering and Digital Modeling of Complex Systems” took place at the Scientific Research Corpus “Technopolis Politekh” of the Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University.
Six thematic sections were organized over the two days of the conference. They covered a wide range of directions. Nearly 150 specialists participated in the conference both in person and online. The key theme of the plenary session was technologies for sustainable and smart city development.
The session was moderated by SPbPU Vice-Rector for Scientific Work Yuri Fomin. Representatives of leading Russian companies — Rostelecom, PNPPC, Supertel, NPP Radar MMS — as well as guests from Uzbekistan and Indonesia took part in the discussion.
Opening the meeting, the first vice-rector of SPbPU Vitaliy Sergeev emphasized that modern technologies are increasingly based on digital and big data technologies, which directly affects the urban environment: The modern world and technology are largely based on digital and big data technologies. This includes the production sector and the topic of today’s meeting — the city. Essentially, these are huge multifunctional centers that accumulate a large amount of resources — from human to energy.Operational management of all this space is a task that interests municipalities, scientific organizations, and universities.
Vitaliy Sergeev also emphasized the importance of engineering support for cities — systems of heat supply, electricity supply, and charging stations for electric transport. He stressed that these issues require the participation of all partners: business, authorities, and science.
Yuri Fomin reminded that there is still no clear formal definition of a “smart city,” but the concept has evolved since the 1990s — from experiments by IBM, Cisco, and Siemens to large-scale programs in China and India. He drew attention to a key contemporary issue: by 2026, both we and the city will generate a massive amount of data that can be analyzed and processed.
Online conference participant, Director of the Center for Sustainable Infrastructure Development of the Engineering Faculty at the University of Indonesia, Professor Mohammed Ali Berawi presented his vision of the harmonious development of cities: We are now living in an era characterized by very rapid transformation and complex technical processes. The decisions we make today, and the development trajectory we choose, make a serious contribution to the lives of future generations.
The professor also emphasized that prosperity depends on the ability to develop technologies, a healthy climate, and a sustainable society: Sustainable digital transformation is an indispensable tool that will allow maintaining a balance between economic development and technological transformation. The integration of digital solutions will give us the opportunity to develop all the indispensable elements for economic prosperity, social development, and environmental protection.
Mohammed Ali Berawi demonstrated to the conference participants the experience of creating Indonesia’s new capital — the city of Nusantara, which is being built on five principles: green, flexible, resilient, inclusive, and smart.
One of the key speakers of the plenary session was the chief designer of SPbPU for systemic digital engineering, director of the Advanced Engineering School “Digital Engineering” Aleksey Borovkov. He directly connected the concept of a “smart city” with the technology of digital twins, but warned against an oversimplified approach. He noted that one of the modern understandings of a smart city is a digital twin based on artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. The key technology here is the digital twin, and the key concept is a dynamic 3D model.The main trap is maintaining relevance: an average city will cost about 50 million dollars, while a metropolis with a full-fledged double will cost 5–10 billion. At the same time, 15–30% of the creation cost is spent on constant updating.
Without regular support, the digital twin literally “rots” and ceases to correspond to reality within six months to a year. The budget must be laid out several years in advance; this is not a one-time story. As a result, more than 90% of what today is called a digital twin is not such in reality. Creating a true digital twin of a city requires years of work, hundreds of highly qualified engineers, and, importantly, verified models, not “garbage data,” emphasized Alexey Borovkov.
As an example, he cited ventilation modeling at PMEF during the pandemic — a calculation of 600 million cells and three billion balances, performed on the Polytechnic supercomputer.
Professor, rector of the Tashkent State Technical University named after Islam Karimov, Sadritdin Turabdzhanov, spoke about two directions of his university’s work in the context of smart cities: In our university, we move in two directions. On the one hand, this is the digital transformation of the university as a model of a smart campus, where the principles of a smart city work in real infrastructure: systems for monitoring energy consumption, digital services for students, access control. On the other hand, it is the modernization of educational programs and the training of engineering personnel for the digital economy and smart cities.
Vice President, Director of the macro-regional branch “North-West” of PJSC “Rostelecom” Alexander Loginov spoke about the practical result: more than 110,000 video surveillance systems in Petersburg, a 50% reduction in road fatalities, the implementation of photo and video fixation systems and smart lighting in Veliky Novgorod, Kaliningrad, and other cities. He noted that the company has created its own production of domestic equipment — video cameras, modems, base stations.
The first deputy general director of PJSC “Perm Scientific and Production Instrument-Making Company” Maksim Antipov presented fiber optic sensor technologies for monitoring heating networks, manholes, bridges, and stadiums. He gave the example of St. Petersburg: under Ligovsky Prospect, heating networks are equipped with sensors that allow determining the location of pipe bursts with an accuracy of up to a meter.
The CEO of JSC “Supertel” Konstantin Lukin emphasized the critical importance of communication networks and technological sovereignty: A smart city is the most complex real-time system, and its main basic criterion is response speed. Despite technological leadership in Russia, the problem remains: communication networks are still not fully sovereign. Security issues are becoming key, and vulnerabilities can only be addressed evolutionarily by creating proprietary technologies.
The director of the scientific and production complex of unmanned aviation and marine systems JSC NPP “Radar MMS” Vasily Antsev spoke about the development of unmanned delivery to hard-to-reach and sparsely populated areas, for example, in Yakutia, where about 220 settlements have no roads. According to him, the main barrier is financial and legislative, but the national project of 2022 has already allowed many regulatory restrictions to be lifted.
At the end of the discussion, Yuri Fomin posed a philosophical question: do people themselves become smarter while phones, robots, and cities become smarter? The speakers’ answers boiled down to several theses: human service becomes elite and expensive; the main difference between a human and AI is unpredictability and the ability to create; it is precisely the human who remains the source of requirements and makes decisions in critical situations. As one participant emphasized: a person must raise and educate the new generation with the correct ideology—then it will never be replaced by neural network technologies.
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