Integrating citizen monitoring and intelligent technologies into a unified digital system for environmental water monitoring

Background In Russia, inland surface waters are controlled and monitored at the state level. The active development of industrial, economic, and household activities necessitates continuous and comprehensive oversight of water bodies. Effective implementation of these principles requires public involvement and the creation of a unified, clear, and accessible tool for recording and identifying problems, thereby ensuring a timely response to changes in aquatic ecosystem conditions. To process and manage large arrays of heterogeneous data, a digital system has been developed. This system integrates public monitoring, machine learning, the Internet of Things, and unmanned aerial vehicles to ensure transparent water body management processes, open decision-making, and accessible data for forecasting short-term and long-term changes in water resources and adjacent territories. Materials and methods This study focuses on water bodies, with the research subject encompassing their control and monitoring processes. To identify key characteristics, a systems analysis approach was employed, incorporating classification, decomposition, observation, business modeling, statistical analysis, and synthesis. Data visualization was achieved through graphical methods, providing a foundation for software engineering techniques and Event-Driven Architecture (EDA). Results This article presents process models that support the digital transformation of water body monitoring. Based on these results, the system’s software and hardware architecture was defined, its minimum technical specifications established, and primary user roles identified. The paper also describes the functional capabilities of each service and the characteristics of the intelligent data processing models used. Conclusion The findings align with existing research on digital process transformation. They hold both theoretical and practical significance for standardizing data, developing unified water management protocols, and ensuring seamless, centralized access to environmental information.