TASS, December 18. The first task of the Ecology Science and Research Center, which the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch established in December following the Great Norilsk Expedition, will be to offer a technology to identify the structures and buildings, which may collapse in the Norilsk Industrial District due to the thawing permafrost, the center’s Director Nikolai Yurkevich told TASS.

“The task is to offer a technology, a computer complex, which could be used to monitor engineering structures in the permafrost areas,” he said. “With an eye to that, we will provide methods and a team of scientists.”

Initial analysis of 200 key structures in the Norilsk Industrial District may be done by using satellite images. That work will identify potentially hazardous structures, and later on seismic sensors will provide further details, he added.

“The ecological center faces a task to use the expedition’s knowledge and methods to offer a new technology for the permanent monitoring, which will be available for all potential clients,” he continued. “Those are not only Nornickel (the Norilsk Nickel Company). We are aware of very big problems, related to stability of engineering structures and collapsing buildings, in Yakutia and the North’s other regions.”

One window for sciences and industries

The center’s general objective is to make a platform for advanced cooperation between sciences and industries, which would be convenient and would feature the so-called ‘one window’ format. The scientific expertise of any research institute is not easily applicable to industries, and the present demand is that the expertise is, at first, developed into a technology, and later on commercialized, the expert told TASS. In reality, this means offering market products, based on scientific research, expertise, training, regulations and metrology.

“Ecology is not just a beautiful and popular word, not only a science, it is also a part of the national strategy, of the Ecology National Project, which aims at processing of the waste banned for storage, at cleanup of most hazardous sites of accumulated ecology damage, as well as at use of the most accessible technologies,” he said.

Expedition to Taimyr

The center will use the experience of the Great Norilsk Expedition, which was organized to offer new approaches to doing businesses in the Arctic. The expedition featured 14 institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch and more than a hundred scientists. The large-scale multidisciplinary projects required a new special structure.

“The expedition has provided scientific groundword and preconditions for development of technologies, while the work on technologies will continue at the Ecology Science and Research Center,” the scientist said.

In summer 2020, the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences sent to the Taimyr Peninsula, at the invitation of Nornickel, a big scientific expedition to conduct a large-scale examination of the area. Scientists will use the expedition’s results to present nature-friendly solutions and suggestions for industrial companies, working in the Arctic.

The expedition’s key points were watersheds of the Rivers Pyasina, Norilka and Ambarnaya, and Lake Pyasino. In August, experts from 14 research institutes of the Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch collected samples of soils, plants and sediments and later began tests at the institutes’ labs.