Expert: Rosatom has found an effective way to introduce digital “smart city” solutions

Rusatom Infrastructure Solutions, Rosatom’s integrator and developer of digital technologies and products, digital solutions for Smart City, Smart Region platforms, and other digital solutions designed to improve the effectiveness of regional and municipal administration, signed agreements on cooperation with the Republic of Udmurtia, Republic of Dagestan, the city of Sochi as well as Tomsk Oblast, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, and Kursk Oblast during the Russian Investment Forum. The documents mention projects to introduce and apply cutting-edge digital technologies and products, digital platforms Smart City, Smart Region, and other digital solutions created by Rosatom. Rusatom Infrastructure Solutions also offers its competence in the sphere of modernization of housing and utilities infrastructure to the regions.

Denis Moskvin, member of the Economic Policy, Industry, Innovative Development, and Entrepreneurship Committee of the State Duma of Russia, told the Energy Expert Center that Rosatom has managed to come up with an effective mechanism to introduce digital Smart City solutions – via concessions. The company can modernize municipal infrastructure using digital technologies via standard concession agreements.

Concessions represent an effective, mutually beneficial financial mechanism for interaction between the state and the private sector. “I’d like to emphasize that the choice of the concession operator is a very important thing if we talk about such socially important matters as the life support of entire cities: this process must be very cautious. Rosatom as a major state corporation with massive scientific and engineering experience looks understandable and stable from this point of view. The corporation is financially stable and can take care of several infrastructure projects at once. The corporation is interested in developing business and the environment in the regions of its presence,” the expert noted.

As a fine example of understandable, reliable, and effective resource provision one can mention the concession agreement Rusatom Infrastructure Solutions signed in December 2018 to modernize the water supply and wastewater treatment system in the city of Lesnoi, Sverdlovsk Oblast using smart city solutions and technologies.