Digital twins are transforming the paradigm of water management and water hazard mitigation globally, facilitating more effective governance. However, comprehensive digitalisation at the basin scale still faces major challenges in data, modelling, policy incentives, and, most critically, widespread inequity. This article outlines a framework for building widely applicable digital-twin basins and addressing the main obstacles. Ensuring high-quality water data requires more comprehensive and well-controlled data aggregation and provision protocols. Significant improvements to the existing data infrastructure are necessary to support this effort. Most existing water models are not effectively integrated and do not include multi-physics to reflect all essential correlated physical processes at the basin scale. The current advancement in physics-informed data-driven approaches may provide a solution. Furthermore, global initiatives are critical to reducing major inequity in less developed regions, particularly the Global South, during digitalisation. It is imperative that researchers, practitioners and policymakers take decisive actions to prioritise research and allocate resources to foster transboundary collaborations towards integrated and extensive digital-twin basin systems, promoting the sustainability and resilience of global water resources.

This study reviewed the existing experience of implementing the nation-wide freshwater health evaluation in China and around the world and proposes a new framework that works in collaboration with the River Chief System (RCS). The institutional context of China with intertwined political and scientific considerations makes it essential to establish a concise and quantitative approach to assess the effectiveness of the RCS as well as local freshwater health conditions that can be easily understood by non-experts for decision-making. To fulfil this objective, we reconstructed the indicator categories based on the best practices in major western countries and the existing regional standards in China. The new indicator framework includes two main aspects: Ecosystem integrity (physical habitat, water quantity, water quality, and aquatic life) and non-ecological performance (social services and water governance). Specifically, the non-ecological attributes of freshwaters are in accordance with the purposes of the RCS and are usually ignored in many countries. The final health grade for a specific water body is determined by a weighted averaging method; this grade is the core element of an evaluation protocol designed to produce reliable data for adaptable water resources governance in China. The research findings in this study will also be integrated into the new national standard to be issued by the Ministry of Water Resources of China in late 2020.

Safety and ecological health are restricted by the high amount of suspended sediment in the Yellow River. To solve the problems of the high sediment content and siltation in the Yellow River, the Xiaolangdi Reservoir (XLDR) has been carrying out water–sediment regulation (WSR) since 2002. To clarify the effects of the water and sediment changes caused by WSR on microbial communities, we analysed the composition of the microbial communities and functional groups in surface water and sediments before and after WSR using high-throughput sequencing and microbial functional annotation. Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Firmicutes were detected as the main microbial communities in the Yellow River’s middle and lower reaches. The water temperature (WT), dissolved oxygen (DO), total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP), and evolution of the microbial communities were all correlated (p < 0.05). The biodiversity indices of the surface water and sediment microbes, respectively, greatly declined. The WSR programme broke down nutrients that had been adsorbed on the sediments, which diminished microbial metabolic activity and impaired the water bodies’ capacity to purify themselves. In summary, this study provides the biological information needed for the ecological conservation of the Yellow River basin, as well as insights into the changes in and response characteristics of microorganisms following severe disturbances in rivers with high sediment concentrations.

Cities in plain areas have small slopes at the bottoms of rivers, with weak hydrodynamics, heavy pollution and poor self-purification capacities for the restoration of biological habitats. Hydrodynamic and water quality improvements are effective means for the ecological restoration of plain urban rivers. The potential for fish habitat resilience in a typical urban river network plain (more than 130 river sections) in the Dianbei part of China was studied. The tolerant fish, Carassius auratus (C. auratus), and the sensitive fishes Trachidermus fasciatus (T. fasciatus) and Anguilla japonica (A. japonica), were selected as the protection targets, and hydrodynamic factors, river morphology and water quality factors were chosen as environmental indicators. With the fish habitat suitability index, a fish habitat resilience potential evaluation model was established. The response of the habitat resilience potential index (HRPI) to hydrodynamic regulation was subsequently analyzed, and the HRPI indicated an increased habitat resilience potential with its value increasing from 0 to 1. Overall, the resilience potential of tolerant fish species was greater than that of sensitive species in the Dianbei. For the HRPI of C. auratus adults (tolerant species), approximately 62.8% of the river sections were above 0.6 (high resilience level) and were concentrated in the northwest area of the river network. While for the resilience potential of A. japonica adults and T. fasciatus adults (sensitive species), only 60% of the river sections exhibited moderate resilience level (HRPI > 0.5). The average dimensionless habitat resilience potential index (AHRPI) was enhanced by water diversion with its values increased by 10.3%, 9.3% and 12.7% for C. auratus adults, T. fasciatus adults and A. japonica adults, respectively. The habitat resilience potential of C. auratus changed little during the spawning period, which indicated that the effect of hydrodynamic regulation was limited. This study provides a scientific basis for managers to restore urban river network habitats in plain areas.

The emergence of smart campuses marks a pivotal advancement in educational pedagogy, environmental quality, resource allocation, and administrative services. This study presents the conceptualization and implementation of the Nanxun Campus of Zhejiang University of Water Resources and Electric Power (ZJWEU), which serves as an exemplary smart water initiative. Adhering to the philosophy of integrating educational facilities within the campus infrastructure, the campus incorporates several specialized zones: a key protection area, the water conservation area, the ecological stability area, the living water spirit area, and the teaching and practice area. This study clarifies the unique attributes, design philosophies, and operational mechanisms of these distinct zones. Central to the campus’s identity is a water culture-centric strategy, with each building reflecting water-themed concepts and providing extensive real-world engineering teaching and practice environments. Since its opening in 2022, the campus has been admitting approximately 5000 students annually and has been a model of water culture campuses that integrate ecology, intelligence, humanism, and synergy. The insights and infrastructure provide a valuable reference and foundational support for the evolution of smart campuses, underscoring the potential to merge water culture with avant-garde educational practices.

There are many river networks in Southeast plain cities of China, such as dense river network, many water projects, poor connectivity, strong pollution load into the river, and difficulty in regulation and control. The water environment problem of river network has become the bottleneck restricting the sustainable economic and social development of plain river network area. In order to improve the river water environment, it is very important to carry out reasonable intelligent regulation of regional river system. In view of the current situation that the water environment regulation is mainly based on manual operation and has not formed intelligent dispatching decision-making, this paper integrates the technology of water power and water quality joint control of urban river network, researches and develops the joint control and joint dispatching system of water environment improvement in plain river network area, and establishes a full coverage, full element three-dimensional monitoring and warning, dispatching and intelligent decision-making system, driven by monitoring data, with model as the core and remote control as the core with the goal of hydrodynamic, water level and water quality as the target, relying on the model cloud, the intelligent one click precise scheduling is realized.