Russia's Arkhangelsk region could become national testing ground for Arctic technologies - proposal

ARKHANGELSK. Aug 13 (Interfax) - The Arkhangelsk region could become a pilot ground for testing Arctic technologies and new mechanisms for attracting private investment, regional governor Alexander Tsybulsky said.

"The Arctic is an environment where the reliability of a technology is tested under real-world, not laboratory, conditions. If a solution has proved its ability to work there, that is a serious competitive advantage on other markets, too," Tsybulsky was quoted by his government's press service as saying during a plenary session of the fourth Arctic-Regions forum, held in Arkhangelsk on August 13-14, on Thursday.

The region could become a testing ground for Arctic technologies where companies can make a journey from laboratory design to the full size testing of equipment and technologies under the real-world conditions of the North. It already has the requisite environment: the White Sea, icy conditions, port infrastructure, shipyards and university science.

Such a platform could be used for testing self-shipping technologies, unmanned marine systems, artificial intelligence for navigation and monitoring, robotic solutions for ports, new materials, communications and digital models for transport systems, the governor said.

The Northern (Arctic) Federal University is already working with unmanned surface vehicles and neural network solutions for the marine environment, while the Arkticheskaya Zvezda (Arctic Star) campus, currently under construction, would offer applied uses in shipbuilding and digitization of the Northern Sea Route.

In the future, the governor proposed considering a possibility of creating a Tested in the Arctic brand for technologies that completed a cycle of tests in the region.