In this study, the current level and prospects of digitalisation and automation of key economic processes in public and corporate procurement were assessed, as well as their role in improving the efficiency of procurement results. The work involved a combination of general scientific methods, including statistical and comparative analysis, the study of expert prognoses, a systematic approach, the method of optimal decision-making and expert evaluations. A comprehensive analysis of the digitalisation and automation of procurement in the Russian Federation was carried out considering the regulatory legislation on procurement (in terms of regulatory requirements). An expert conformity-assessment of the current digitalisation level of procurement business processes with the actual agents was carried out. The results showed that regulated procurement in the Russian Federation undergoes the initial stage of digital transformation. The electronisation and automation of procurement business processes are highly irregular under the duality in the procurement legislation. In a number of areas, this results in higher transaction costs for economic agents. It was also revealed that inadequate regulatory practices in specific processes significantly slow down their digital transformation. In the IT sector of state procurement, it is necessary to expand the use of innovative technologies. The dependence of critical IT infrastructure on foreign software and equipment should be minimal.

This article investigates specific features of urban land management. Urban land management is acquiring particular importance, since the major focus of urban development consists in satisfying the needs of city residents. To this end, governments aim to address the problems of forming and managing cities and city resources, including lands. We argue that urban lands are valuable territorial spaces that are actively involved in investment and construction processes. In this regard, city development priorities should rely on effective management of existing land resources, which have a great potential for increasing the investment attractiveness of urban territories. A number of suggestions are proposed to solve these tasks. It is concluded that an integral system of land management can only be formed at the state level. This requires a mechanism describing an expected economic impact, which is aimed at fulfilling state obligations in the field of land policy, creating social guarantees, ensuring the rights of land subjects, and improving the environmental situation. As a result, the competent use of land resources will contribute to overcoming crisis social phenomena, ensuring sustainable economic growth and improving the life quality of urban population on the basis of increasing the territorial value.

Hinged ventilated facade systems can be used to protect buildings from damaging effects and to achieve various designing and structural goals. The study aims to analyse the most common facing construction materials for the installation of hinged ventilated facades. The question of selecting an optimal facing material is relevant for both building owners, building designers and building residents, since it is the facade that sets the tone for the rest of the building. The present study considers the standard design of the ventilated facade, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of existing facing materials for ventilated facades. A comparative analysis of the characteristics of facing materials is carried out. It is noted that the building can be faced by expensive materials, yet having inferior technical characteristics, or relatively inexpensive materials, yet performing their main functions. In addition to aesthetic properties, the facing material should perform the protection of both the facade walls and the subsystem (metal) components, including insulation. In the conclusion, the authors describe the facing material with the most optimal characteristics among those studied in the paper.

The characteristics of modelling the combined action of reinforcement and concrete on the example of composite reinforcement are discussed. In the work, glass-fibre and basalt composite A-type deformed reinforcing bars were considered. The studied samples of composite reinforcement comprised a power rod having an anchor layer, evenly distributed on the surface at an angle to its longitudinal axis. The anchor layer was manufactured from a thermosetting resin and a continuously reinforcing filler. Atype reinforcement is formed by pressing the reinforcing bundle into the power rod, while ribs are generated on the surface. The experiments carried out using concrete cubes having a rib size of 15 cm and prisms having a cross-section of 15×15 cm and height of 60 cm showed that the average values of  maximum adhesion strength of the studied reinforcement samples are comparable and meet the established standards. Conversely, the use of basalt composites has a negligible impact on the adhesion of reinforcement to concrete. This indicator is significantly affected by the configuration of the external profile of the rod. In addition, the uniform operation of the “reinforcement – concrete” system was noted. Due to the reinforcement profile used during the experiment, uniform and stable behaviour of the rod in concrete was achieved, as demonstrated by the stress-displacement diagrams based on the results of the pull-out test. The obtained adhesion of composite glass-fibre and basalt reinforcement to concrete allows general dependencies for calculating the anchoring of this reinforcement in concrete to be used.

The study is aimed at improving highway alignment charts in order to improve the operating characteristics of highway sections, adapt them to regulatory requirements for heavy transport and reconstruct accident-prone sections based on information produced by state-of-the-art data collection systems for road objects without costly geodetic surveys. The article presents methods for constructing a digital preliminary trajectory of a highway using relationship databases and algorithms that implement these approaches according to data from video certification. As a result, a preliminary highway alignment chart that meets current regulatory documents is developed, including the impact severity of fences for heavy transport. It is noted that the problems of constructing preliminary alignment charts of highways for heavy transport in Russia could be solved without conducting costly geodetic surveys, but relying on digital trade and regional databases of road facilities, which are permanently updated by state-of-the-art data collection systems for road objects.

The study aims to determine the prospects of integrated automation in the management of construction stages and scheduling on the basis of the 4D-modelling concept, which is applied in domestic and foreign practice of capital construction for visualizing the sequence of construction stages. Due to the use of conventional planning tools, the majority of developers fail to meet the established construction deadlines. At present, the construction industry is at the stage of transition from 2D documentation and step-by-step processes of forming a digital model to an integrated schedule based on the concept of 4D-modelling. Within the framework of transitioning to Industry 4.0, the introduction of 4D-modelling in the BIM model will revolutionize the construction industry by integrating these 3D models with additional planning dimensions and cost estimations. The application of 4D-modelling is shown to improve the efficiency of work processes, which were previously associated with a great risk and inefficiency of construction stages. Currently, the application of the 4D-visualization method is at its nascent stage due to a number of barriers and problems, including those related to the reassessment of implementation costs, a search for competent personnel, as well as a lack of integrated models. At the same time, the application of 4D models appears to be a necessary and inevitable transition to a new stage of digital maturity of the construction industry, which allows the subjects of the construction process to effectively visualize construction stages, accurately plan the required resources and optimize communications within each stage.

The study is aimed at the development of management and engineering solutions at the overhaul stage of a construction facility represented by A-331 “Vilyui” highway (Tulun – Bratsk – Ust'-Kut – Mirny – Yakutsk) using its digital model. The research methodology is based on the BIM modelling concept used in domestic and foreign practice during the overhaul of construction facilities using Autodesk Revit software and automated control systems for road construction equipment. The overhaul repair of highways represents one of the priority directions in road construction, which is aimed at the restoration of upper road structural layers taking into account the evenness and roughness requirements. In order to improve the efficiency of management decisions, it is advisable to integrate 3D-modelling tools into the generally accepted overhaul stages in the life cycle of construction facilities, which optimizes the overhaul projects and ensures their digital maturity. On this basis, the article presents a digital information model for a capital construction object taking into account factors impeding its wide application. The stages of forming management and engineering documentation using automated design tools are analysed. An analysis of the integration of BIM technologies into the overhaul stage in the life cycle of construction objects was carried out using the example of A-331 "Vilyui" highway. Based on the applied digital model, the schedules of works and material supply were developed, along with the specification of requirements for machines, mechanisms and labour costs. The automated design tools applied during the overhaul of construction facilities were shown to be applicable for obtaining the actual distribution of the volumes of repair works, determining the planned time interval of their fulfilment, as well as optimizing the expenditure of the budgetary funds and other resources.

The article presents the results of an experimental part of the probabilistic and statistical approach to the design accounting of consequences caused by non-stationary stochastic changes in the temperature and humidity of external environment. Cryogenic effects of the environment are modelled by cyclic freezing tests according to the third method of GOST 1006-2012. Two series of cubic and prismatic (100 × 100 × 400 mm) samples were tested, including standard concrete (SC) and fibrous concrete (FC, µ = 1.5%) reinforced by polypropilen fibres with df = 0.8 mm diameter and lf = 40 mm length. Following the specified number of cycles, the samples were subject to axial compression under the constant deformation rate of 5·10-3 1/s. The kinetics of cyclic freezing and thawing is analysed. In addition, the cross-correlation between the statistics of the strength and deformability distribution in the standard and fibrous concretes was assessed using complete σb – εb diagrams and discrete models corresponding to different stages of the deformation response. It is proposed to differentiate the criteria conditions for assessing the consequences of climatic structural degradation taking into account the usability specification of structures.

In the article, a method for designing databases for the road industry that meets the requirements of the digital economy was developed. The set-theory analysis of complex systems implemented by relational databases (RDBs) was used. This approach meets current trends in the global digital economy, where relational databases provide efficient operation of the banking sector, industrial production management, fast data processing (bank cards, Internet search), etc. The Department of Roads at Irkutsk National Research Technical University designed and is developing the road database for the Irkutsk region. The paper considers the concept of this project and prospects of its further development with a view to the possible use of this database by remote users. The specifics of digital economy in the Russian Federation call for establishing branches and territorial databases, including the road database for the Russian regions. The efficient solutions for such a database were proposed, including, in particular, integrating remote users with the back-end database based on the attribute characteristics to limit the available content and allowable changes to the backend data.

This article addresses advanced methods of wastewater treatment, which presents an urgent global problem. The use of membranes or so-called membrane bioreactors (MBR) at treatment facilities comprises an efficient method of wastewater treatment. The characteristics of membrane designs along with their practical advantages and disadvantages are considered. Examples of using MBR at wastewater treatment plants in Germany, Italy and Sweden are examined. A recently developed MBR technology based on filtration through microor ultrafiltration membranes is gaining in popularity. In such technologies, the high quality of treated water is achieved due to the MBR design, which increases both the concentration of activated sludge in the bioreactor and its filtering capacity. Over 100 years of contemporary residential and industrial wastewater treatment, no other implemented technology has exhibited as many positive effects. Due to the wide range of available membranes and modules, suitable systems can be found for almost any type of water treatment application. In addition, these membranes are compact, which becomes an advantage when clearing areas for new construction or when the expansion of a wastewater treatment plant is limited.

The possibility of applying wastewater truck transport in existing, developing and reconstructed wastewater discharge systems is considered. Truck transport in the form of wastewater vacuum trucks has been used for decades to collect and remove wastewaters from cesspools and septic tanks of private housing and individual enterprises. In this regard, the volumes and distances of economically profitable application of truck transport should be determined, along with the conditions for switching to pipeline wastewater transport in the form of pressure and non-pressure pipelines. Such questions often arise when developing prospective schemes of wastewater discharge in small populated or remote urbanized areas. The amount of truck transportation of wastewaters is increasing annually, largely due to intensification of individual housebuilding and the need to improve living conditions in rural populated areas. However, the conducted analysis showed the absence of a recommendatory and legislative basis for the stated problem to be solved. In the course of the study, the dependences of the life cycle cost of pipeline and truck discharge systems on the volume of wastewaters and the distance of their transportation were obtained. An overlapping of these functions gives intersection points indicating the possibility of applying truck and pipeline wastewater transport in certain areas. According to the volumes and distances of wastewater transportation, the application areas of truck transport depend on the local conditions of pipeline construction, regional seismic activity, electric power cost and environmental requirements. These results can be used in wastewater logistics, organization and optimization of district wastewater discharge systems, as well as when developing methods for optimizing design solutions.

The population of the Baikal region (unofficial name of the Irkutsk region) amounts to 2.36 million people, mainly residing in the Angara River area. Therefore, 91% of all water intake facilities belong the surface shore, river or reservoir types. With the construction of a chain of hydroelectric power plants at the Angara River in 1961, Lake Baikal and the Irkutsk reservoir have become the only artificial reservoir, whose water level depends on the natural inflow into the lake, as well as energy and water transport activities. As a result, the perennial water level in Lake Baikal and the Bratsk reservoir varies across a wide range, about 2 and 10 m, respectively. In this study, the effect of variations in the water level in Lake Baikal on the efficiency of all water intake facilities of the Angara River is addressed. The conducted calculations and field studies showed that an increase in the water level in water bodies leads to a decreased water quality, requiring its further purification. When the water level decreases, the performance of water intake facilities decreases, requiring replacement of the pumping equipment. An analysis of the surface water intake facilities in the populated areas of the Baikal region showed that the efficient operation of the existing structures is unachievable under significant variations in the water level in Lake Baikal and the Angara River. It is recommended to use underground water sources. Floating water intake or shore structures operating over the entire range of varying water levels in the water body may be also used.

This paper addressed the selection of overhaul methods for roads in the permafrost area. Ensuring the strength and stability of the road base and engineering structures under the permafrost conditions and deep seasonal freezing of soils remains one of the main scientific and technical challenges of road construction and maintenance in the northern regions. The main factors causing the failure of road structures were reviewed, including both climate change and complex geological and hydrogeological conditions of the area. Since the construction of the Amur Road, the deformation has been observed in many of its sections. In 2012, the Federal State Institution of Road Management “Zabaykalye”, together with engineering and scientific organisations, developed a target programme for inspecting such sections. The article discusses the renovation measures and technologies elaborated under this programme, which include the construction of culverts, rockfills, thermal diodes and cooling layers, awnings, and protective berms. The monitoring of the repaired sections shows insignificant deformation of the road surface and road base; 55 % of the sections were fully stabilised. However, the final assessment of the permafrost stabilisation will take a longer time. The establishment of an effective system of engineering-geocryological monitoring for the Amur Road should become the most important measure, whose implementation will allow dangerous deformations to be prevented and efficient measures for protecting the roadbed from their negative impact to be developed.

In this work, based on the analysis and classification of arranging modern Austrian churches within the urban structure, an analogy with Russian churches was drawn, the development of the modern architecture of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 21^st century was forecasted, the location of contemporary sacral architecture in the current urban area of Irkutsk was considered, and a trend to reestablish traditional techniques was revealed. Over 100 modern churches of Austrian cities, including Vienna, Salzburg, Graz and their suburbs, were examined and photofiled; the scientific publications of Austrian architects and art historians in this field were studied. The reforms in the Catholic Church in the 20^th century that influenced the siting, style and form of religious architecture were addressed, and the dynamic transformation of sacred architecture was analysed. Contemporary and reconstructed historical sacral buildings of Irkutsk were examined and analysed. The tendencies in their development were summarised in the light of newly erected buildings and conceptual student and professional architectural designs of churches. Due to the political turmoil of 1917 in Russia, the development of the Russian Orthodox Church has been halted for 70 years. Thus, at the end of the 20^th century, the sacral architecture revived in the same state it was destroyed. However, as a symbol of culture and architectural identity, public space, touristic and urban attraction, it has been slowly renovated over the past 30 years; new architectural solutions and locations in the urban space are being modernised. The studies show that any architectural style, even the conservative religious architecture, responds to the social phenomena and its emerging needs, resulting in a gradual change of its status in the urban development, as well as spatial organisation, composition, form and architectural style, through its implementers, namely architects and customers.

In this work, a concept of modern residential development, including public infrastructure, integrated seamlessly into the historic centre of Irkutsk was elaborated. The proposed location of the quarter lies within the boundaries of Rabochaya Street, the territory of the Machine-Building Plant, the Ushakovka river embankment and Frank Kamenetsky and Oktyabrskaya Revolution streets. The contemporary town planning structures within the historical context were analysed using the examples of various cities. The components of urban identity and trends, which affect its formation, were studied. The characteristics of the form making for the objects having different purposes within the urban structure of Irkutsk were defined. Design solutions for constructing a modern residential area together with public buildings in the historic centre of Irkutsk were provided. When developing the project, studying urban identity and its implementation in the design solutions was emphasised. The proposed concept aims to preserve urban identity and stresses the characteristics of the historic architecture of the city in current urban development.

In this article, implementing digitalisation in the educational process of students of creative disciplines is discussed. The research is based on the final paper completed within the framework of the professional retraining programme entitled “Project Management in Digital Educational Environment of a University” (NRNU MEPhI). The importance of collecting the digital footprint of students during the learning process as valuable information content was revealed, which allows feedback in the teaching process to be established in order to adjust the educational path. The challenges of implementing the digital footprint acquisition of students attending Art and Design were formulated, and the existing opportunities for implementing this process were assessed. The principles of digitalisation in the educational process based on the performance (”to know”, “to be able to”, “to master”) were defined, which allows the methods of digital footprint acquisition to be identified. The study showed that forming a working model of “student–young professional–production” is based on the digitalisation of education, which implies a well-functioning system of “teacher–content–student–information technology”.

The issues of system-activity formation and complex construction of the aporia in the discourse of transhumanism ideas in the context of developing and describing the metatheory of psychological design of urban environment are considered. In this connection, the compositional aspects of creating a comfortable environment in the city centre of a Siberian settlement were specified and elaborated following the interaction systems of architectural and urban planning complex with the spatial organisation of a designed fragment of urban environment and its colour and light composition. The form and content, techniques, technologies and methods for arranging the unified urban style of buildings and objects filling the trade environment were examined and described in the artistic concept of arranging the elements of psychological design in the unique environment of Irkutsk. The mechanism of artistic method in the context of the construction and development of general metatheory while formulating and solving problems of urban design is revealed, in particular, in their relation to the assimilation of discourse on the ideas of transhumanism in the functional-spatial organisation of the elements of art culture in the urban environment. This approach involves the methodological realisation of the correction function in the process of optimising the artistic image of complex objects in the psychological design of the urban environment. Developing the regulations of design activity to meet the requirements of humanisation of the urban environment allows the aporia in the discourse of transhumanism ideology to be defined and the ways of a promising metatheory of psychological perception of the urban environment, as well as information systems that further enhance the role of visual information in the aesthetic of urban environment, to be addressed.