China has built world's largest environment monitoring network, says minister

China has established the world's largest ecological and environmental monitoring network, increasingly supported with advanced technologies, Minister of Ecology and Environment Huang Runqiu said on Friday.

At a news conference organized by the State Council Information Office, Huang disclosed that the number of monitoring stations the ministry directly oversees across the country stands at over 33,000.

These facilities have covered all prefecture-level cities and above, key river basins, and sea areas, monitoring a wide range of elements including water, air, soil, oceans, ecosystems, and noise, he continued.

The minister also noted significant strides in making the monitoring network more digital and intelligent by integrating advanced technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence and cloud computing.

"As China advances its pollution control efforts and the Beautiful China initiative, demand has grown for more accurate, comprehensive and timely monitoring data," he said.

Against this backdrop, he said the ministry must urgently transition its primary methods of sampling, analysis, operation and maintenance in environmental monitoring from manual approaches to automated, digital and intelligent ones.

The country has managed to achieve full-process automation in environmental monitoring procedures such as sampling, sample delivery and analytical testing, he disclosed.

In the monitoring work for surface water, for instance, the use of drones for automated sample collection reduces the time required by over 70 percent, he said, adding such an application has unique advantages, particularly in remote areas.

He said that in the analytical testing phase, there have been laboratories that can perform automated, continuous analysis and testing without human intervention even in complete darkness, increasing efficiency by more than eightfold compared to manual operations.

The country's air and water monitoring network is slated for a smart overhaul of its operational diagnostics and maintenance, Huang continued.

After being upgraded, he said the frequency of maintenance for such facilities will be reduced from once per week to once per month, cutting manual involvement by over 70 percent.

He revealed that the intelligent transformation has been underway in 143 air automatic monitoring stations in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

He went on to highlight the rapidly accelerating use of AI in environmental monitoring.

The ministry has established ecological environment spectrum databases and sound signature libraries in its efforts to leverage AI to accurately pinpoint the sources of environmental problems.

He said with the help of sound recognition AI technology, for example, noise sources can be rapidly identified — whether they originate from construction, transportation or social activities.

This enables more targeted and efficient supervision, allowing public noise pollution concerns to be addressed more effectively, he said.