The Pingshan River comprehensive watershed management and water quality improvement project, for which IWHR served as the consultancy and designing agency, won the Award of 2020-2021 China High-Quality Engineering Project.

The Pingshan Project is China’s first large-scale, basin-wide water ecology improvement project aiming at ensuring the required water quality at the boundary cross section of river before entering the downstream administrative district.

The IWHR research team has: 1) developed fundamental theories and technical route for watershed management and water quality improvement considering the whole industrial chain, all factors and entire process; 2) developed a complete set of technologies integrating precise blocking of pollutants, dispersed water regulation and storage, distributed water treatment and in-situ water reuse; 3) revealed the mechanism of river basin water cycle and its associated processes, established a total-factor, multi-process simulation system for comprehensive watershed management, and proposed a plan of optimized layout for water environment improvement; 4) built an integrated platform of intelligent river basin management and service consisting of a multi-dimensional monitoring system, a multi-dimensional information service platform, a smart water dispatching platform and a supportive environment system, based on IoT (Internet of Things), cloud computing and big data.

With the joint effort of IWHR and multiple stakeholders, the water quality of the Pingshan River reached Class 3 (middle in China’s five-class water quality evaluation system ranging from Class 1~5, with Class 1 being the best) throughout the year, ranking first in Shenzhen Municipality in 2020. The project sets an example for watershed management nationwide and is widely recognized by the media and the public.

The Pingshan Wetland Park in Shenzhen Municipality [Photo / Shenzhen Government]