The Buildings and Structures Monitoring Centre

The current state of permafrost soils is to a large extent shaped by global climate change in the Arctic. Global warming inevitably causes quantitative and qualitative changes in cryolithozone. Combined, the higher average air temperature and man-made impacts on permafrost soils result in a cumulative effect that may undermine the stability of permafrost soils around bases and in natural and engineering disasters. To address this issue and mitigate the accident risk, in 2021 the Company’s Polar Division developed and commissioned an innovative system to monitor the condition of bases and foundations of buildings and structures located in permafrost areas. The project is run in the Norilsk Industrial District across the Company's assets and urban infrastructure facilities and relies on cutting edge automated surveillance solutions and a dedicated software – an information and diagnostics system of the Polar Division. The project is focused on using automatic equipment to keep real-time track of temperatures in permafrost soils around bases, behavior in foundations, as well as temperature and humidity levels in crawl spaces. It seeks to help prevent accidents at Nornickel’s industrial facilities and, later on, local housing infrastructure and proactively identify any hazardous defects or deviations that might result in damage to the buildings and structures or their elements, with special safety criteria developed for all monitored indicators. If any such indicator exceeds its threshold, a signal is sent that the facility needs inspection and fixing. Key figures of the system: 17 production sites, >950 facilities connected to the diagnostic system 218 of which are fully automated, >600 employees use the system, 138 strain gauges, 1,200 inclinometers, 30 accelerometers, >450 thermistor strings etc.