At the All-Russian Conference named after A. I. Shchepovskih experts discussed innovative methods of environmental monitoring
During the practical session "Topical issues of monitoring the state of atmospheric air and monitoring industrial emissions from oil and gas and chemical industries", representatives of government agencies, research institutes and industrial enterprises discussed modern approaches to environmental monitoring and control.
Elena Lezina, Deputy Director for Scientific Work at the State Budgetary Institution Mosekomonitoring, presented a report on the Unified Environmental Monitoring System of the city of Moscow. Currently, the Moscow network includes 78 automatic air pollution control stations, including 19 stations in the Moscow region near the city borders. The system allows to control 20 different parameters, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone, suspended particles PM10 and PM2.5.
Of particular interest were the innovative technologies used in the capital — Russia's first automatic control system for the composition of suspended particles, a mobile scanning infrared gas visualization system and a 24-hour video surveillance system for industrial areas. As noted by Elena Lezina, in recent years, the share of domestic high-precision equipment in the monitoring system has increased from 20% to 70%.
Ivan Serebritskiy, Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Environmental Management, Environmental Protection and Environmental Safety of St. Petersburg, shared his experience in modernizing the integrated monitoring system in the Northern Capital. In 2023-2025, the city has completely replaced all atmospheric air monitoring stations with new innovative automatic stations. The territorial surveillance system of St. Petersburg now includes 25 automatic stations located in 18 districts of the city, and provides 100% coverage of the territory.
The report paid special attention to the development of an automated surface water monitoring system. By 2025, three automatic stationary monitoring stations have been upgraded in St. Petersburg, and an increase in their number to eight is planned for the future until 2028.
Raisa Shagidullina, Senior Specialist at the Institute of Ecology and Subsoil Use of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tatarstan, presented a report on modeling atmospheric air pollution processes using a system of summary calculations and automatic monitoring results. She stressed the importance of using digital models to predict the spread of pollutants and identify potential sources of emissions.
Roman Rodin, Head of the Scientific and Technical Center "Environment" of the Mendeleev VNIIM, highlighted in his speech the features of ensuring the uniformity of measurements in the creation and operation of automatic control systems for emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere.
Vladislav Korobkin, an expert of the Coordinating Council under the Governor of the Chelyabinsk Region on environmental issues, shared his experience in modernizing industrial environmental monitoring systems and creating local surveillance systems at industrial enterprises.
All participants of the session noted the need for further development of monitoring systems in several key areas: completing the modernization of stations and ensuring the smooth functioning of measuring equipment, switching to domestic devices with an expanded scope of accreditation, improving software for data collection and processing, as well as developing methods for operational analysis of the environmental situation.
Special attention was paid to the prospects of using artificial intelligence to improve the accuracy of forecasting air pollution and calculating the dispersion of emissions from various sources under various meteorological conditions.
All-Russian Scientific and Practical Conference named after A. I. Shchepovskikh continues to be one of the leading professional platforms for discussing industrial ecology issues and promotes the introduction of innovative approaches to environmental protection at enterprises of the Russian petrochemical complex.