Members of 110 IT-teams will take part in the ArkTek Data competition to develop digital services for the Arctic. They will present their urban development, environmental and tourism development projects. The winners will receive 3 million rubles.

“The Arctic is a strategically important region for the country, accounting for 11 percent of its national income and 22 percent of its exports,” said Mikhail Kuznetsov, Director of Vostokgosplan, a federal research institution. “However, the harsh climate is hindering the Arctic’s development. With a mere 1 percent of the country’s population living in the region, there is a shortage of qualified specialists. To optimize energy and food supplies to the region, Vostokgosplan has developed a digital alternative to delivering goods to the country’s northern territories. This system shortens supply chains and enhances transparency, reducing the prices that people living in the Arctic pay for goods brought into the region. Thanks to our own positive experience of developing IT solutions, we believe advanced digital technology is likely to change the quality of life for people in the Arctic. The optimization of urban and transport infrastructure, and the big data-enabled interactive monitoring of the environment and climate in the Extreme North will make the Arctic a more attractive region where not only the mining sector is being developed but also a service economy, creating comfortable conditions for the life and work of people,” Mikhail Kuznetsov explained.

Three groups will be involved in digital service projects: Arctic Urbanization, Arctic Environment and Arctic Tourism. The first group is expected to develop solutions for optimizing the location of urban facilities, so they can be easily reached by transport, or to identify towns with restricted access to health care. The Arctic Environment group will be engaged in developing IT solutions for analyzing environmental problems and risks associated with the extraction of mineral resources or arranging services to optimize the location of facilities that monitor pollution levels and waste collection in the Arctic. IT specialists from the Arctic Tourism group will be designing tools to gauge tourism demand in the Arkhangelsk Region or creating a service for the interactive visualization of how a city is developing, by year or by the type of residential housing, which helps plan the expansion of the city and show changes visually. The ArkTek Data final is scheduled for August 11, 2023 as part of the plans for Russia’s Arctic Council chairmanship in 2021-2023, with support from the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and Arctic; the operator is the Roscongress Foundation. 

The majority of participants in the competition are students and young specialists: young people aged between 18 and 22 account for 35.5 percent; those between 28 and 35 account for 24.6 percent; and people between 23 and 27 years of age make up 21.7 percent of the total. Teams from the Central Federal District account for 46 percent of all, teams from the Northwestern Federal District account for 18 percent, the Siberian Federal District for 9 percent, and the Far Eastern and North Caucasus federal districts for 7 percent each.  

The objective of the ArkTek competition is to transform scientific and technological solutions into digital innovations, to develop engineering solutions that ensure comfortable lives for people in the Arctic and to facilitate the successful operation of businesses in the region. The deadline for submitting applications is July 1, 2023.