The Universities Mundial: How the Russian Universities Prepared for the FIFA World Cup
The FIFA World Cup is a major sports event. Every aspect of organizing and holding it receives special attention. Everything is important here: stadiums, transport infrastructure, official branding, atmosphere, goals, volunteers and fans.With the preparation and the launch of the World Cup in Russia, universities have flagged support for the football and are participating in World Cup. The leading Russian universities, Russian Academic Excellence Project participants (Project 5-100), took some serious creative brainpower that caused a positive effect. They prepared and successfully implemented a number of innovative projects and outstanding technological solutions in various areas related to this event. While the final result depends on how teams will play, generating ideas can provide a measure of depth. See how creative ideas, technologies and techniques have already worked and can be worked into the next national and international sports competitions!
The 2018 FIFA World Cup: persons
Far Eastern Federal University scored the first goal
Yuri Gazinsky, a graduate of Far Eastern Federal University participating in Project 5-100, scored the first goal of the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The world’s major sports event started on June 14 with a match between the teams of Russia and Saudi Arabia in Moscow.
Tomsk State University invented Zabivaka
Zabivaka, the official mascot of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, was designed by Ekaterina Bocharova, a graduate student of TSU’s Graphic Design Department. Zabivaka greets viewers from TV screens and meets fans coming to Russia to attend the 2018 FIFA World Cup. It can be seen everywhere, including flags, banners, souvenirs, etc. The wolf playing football was selected by the Russians by open vote, and it received over 50% of votes.
“The wolf is young, sporty and resolute. He has a large family, in which he is the youngest one,” noted Ekaterina. She said that Zabivaka had to work hard, but he is an optimist. “This is the only mood you can have when you are trying to win the championship,” the mascot designer said.
The Higher School of Economics designed the FIFA poster
The National Research University Higher School of Economics has also contributed to the design of the 2018 FIFA World Cup branding. Igor Gurovich, Associate Professor, HSE Art and Design School, an active participant in international competitions and biennales, a laureate of prestigious professional awards, a designer and poster artist, created the official poster for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
Lev Yashin, a symbol of Russian football, is the main figure. Mr Yashin played in four FIFA World Cups – in 1958, 1962, 1966 and 1970 – and remains the only goalkeeper in the history of football to win the Ballon d’Or. In the poster, he is wearing his traditional outfit, a black shirt and shorts, a knee brace and his famous cap. He is shown reaching the ball, one-half of which is a typical football from Lev Yashin’s era, with the other depicting the vast landmass of Russia as seen from space. The light rays of light emitted by the ball symbolize the tournament’s energy, while the circle of green represents the pitches of 12 stadiums in 11 Host Cities that will stage the 64 matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.“The style of Soviet post-Constructivist posters from the 1920s and 1930s, their unique visual language, a new, fresh poetry of figurative images became one of the most important and revered elements of Russian culture,” said Mr Gurovich. “This language is unquestionably thought of as Russian throughout the world. Therefore, in my work on the poster, I really wanted to make this language modern and relevant once again.” FIFA Secretary General Fatma Samoura said that the Official Poster of the 2018 FIFA World Cup was a true reflection of Russia’s artistic and football heritage.
Ural Federal University created a manual for football fans
To improve understanding and establish friendship between the Russians and foreign football fans visiting the 2018 FIFA World Cup, specialists of Ural Federal University created Russia’s first manual describing the classification of fans, their features, and current stereotypes related to them, as well as differences between Russian and foreign fans.
Moreover, it will be suggested to the foreign guests that they test the operation of the Reactor complex which is to normalize various bodily functions. The complex will help the fans restore normal physical processes in their bodies after stress related to the disappointing performance of their teams, and cope with a headache without taking medicines, as well as with neurosis and depression.
ITMO modelled a fan fight “predictor”
For organizers, it is important to analyze fans’ mood during the matches to prevent conflicts. ITMO University modelled a system forecasting the probability of football fans fights during games based on fans’ posts on social media and images from video cameras.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Action
Opportunities for students to get involved with the sport at the university are plentiful, but Russian universities are big winners while getting involved in the sport too, and the World Cup has already seen a significant volume of innovations and research came from these universities.
Broadcasting
For example, ITMO University designed a VR simulator to help the employees manage streams of people. As part of FIFA’s Legacy Programme, students from 14 other Russian universities, including National Research University Higher School of Economics, Samara University, Kazan Federal University, Ural Federal University, Lobachevsky University, Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University, etc., help behind the scenes to assist in broadcasting the world’s biggest single-sport event to billions around the world. As well as being deployed at the 12 stadiums, in Moscow students are also working at the International Broadcast Centre (IBC).
Training and Licensing
Meanwhile, HSE has become the only Russian partner of the FIFA/CIES International University Network with a joint professional retraining program in Sports Management. This year, Ural Federal University started to train coaches possessing UEFA-endorsed football coaching licenses. The university has been certified to train and license Category C and D coaches. The decision was made at a meeting of Executive Committee of the Russian Football Union. Twenty-five people have already undergone training.
Building and Monitoring
Around fifty members of the students’ teams from St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad and Ukhta took part in the construction of the Kaliningrad Stadium, which is to host four 2018 FIFA World Cup matches. 21 students from the Faculty of Radio Engineering, Faculty of Electronics and Faculty of Industrial Automation and Electrical Engineering of the First Electrotechnical University (ETU “LETI”) were deployed to build the facility.
Researchers from the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University in Kaliningrad created a space monitoring service for the construction of the Kaliningrad Stadium. The two services have been implemented on the website of the Space Services Centre for the Kaliningrad Region.
The first service, “Space Monitoring of 2018 FIFA World Cup Stadium Construction”, is to provide for visual analysis of technological and man-caused processes during the construction of the stadium and related infrastructure on Oktyabrksy Island, based on a set of space images.
The second service, “Space Monitoring of the Kaliningrad Region”, was designed to provide for a visual search for current and previously made space images. Such images allow performing various tasks related to monitoring of natural and man-made landscape.
2018 FIFA World Cup in Motion
Cloud Technologies for Smart Transport
In the run-up to the 2018 FIFA World Cup, future streams of fans (their routes to and between cities hosting the World Cup) were to be modelled in order to adapt the transport system based on the fans’ plans: what matches they plan to watch. ITMO University implemented this project at the request of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Transport Directorate.
The new Vezde payment system for public transport designed by the St. Petersburg university allows working out a route based on real information on the movement of buses and trolleybuses, pay for the trip using a smartphone, detect fare jumpers, and fully analyse the city’s passenger traffic.
The main feature of the system is that it connects all devices through cloud technologies. Thus, passengers can pay for a trip using almost any identifier linked to their account, or even by dialling a number which one can find in a bus or trolleybus. Top-up of an account is available via an ATM, a bank card, etc.
A Chatbot for Trams
Aibek Khashimov and Valery Abelianz, first-year students of the master’s degree program of the Institute of Radioelectronics and Information Technology. of Ural Federal University, created a chatbot on VKontakte (a Russian social networking service) for the 2018 FIFA World Cup to track public transport in Yekaterinburg, a city hosting the event. A user should activate the chatbot and provide it with the location to know when the necessary tram arrives. The chatbot will identify the tram stop and its direction and show the arriving trams.
Fan Travel Model
When the road network was designed, the necessary measures were also taken. To assess possible improvements to the road network at the design stage, ITMO University suggested assessment based on multi-agent simulation for identifying critical areas to be developed or modified first and foremost. To achieve this, the data on the real condition of the road network is used (traffic flow, start and final destinations of the trips, timing). The university modelled fan travel after a semi-final of the 2018 FIFAWorld Cup from the Zenith Arena stadium, taking into account the commissioning of the Western High-Speed Diameter, which allows seeing changes in the places where traffic jams form.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Colors
Association Map
Many football fans travel between the 11 host cities. Some of them may have only one day to go sightseeing in each of the cities, so ITMO University designed maps of short tourist walking routes for each of the 11 host cities of the championship, which include the most important sights and locations.
The routes were generated by means of combining the data about popular tourist sights from TripAdvisor, important cultural or historic objects from Wikipedia, and social media data showing the popularity of certain places with tourists and locals. Thus, visitors obtain a full picture of the city.
Each place of interest is linked to a particular association with the city and the country (e.g., Alexander Pushkin or the USSR). Thus, a visitor gets a full picture of the city. The map of each city includes no more than 15 places of interest, but each of them has historical associations and description.
Multilingual Guides
The tour guides trained specially for the 2018 FIFA World Cup offer their services to the fans who would like to learn more about the Russian culture. For example, specialists of Kazan Federal University have prepared tours in ten foreign languages.
In Nizhny Novgorod, tour guides were trained at Lobachevsky University under a special evening program for guides in English and French.
Several dozen volunteers, students of South Ural State University, are currently in host cities, including Yekaterinburg and St. Petersburg. They meet and accompany guests, work with fans during matches and participate in ticketing and tourist programs. Besides, over 150 HSE students undergoing various training programs are the World Cup volunteers, and 105 Sechenov University students successfully passed all selection rounds and joined the team of city volunteers actively involved in hosting the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Moscow in the areas such as medical services and “the last mile”. The volunteer centre operates for 12 days for providing medical and navigation services near the two stadiums, Luzhniki Stadium and Otkritie Arena (Spartak).
(Project 5-100 is a government-run Russian Academic Excellence initiative. The aim of Project 5-100 is to strengthen Russia’s position as an outstanding place for education and research and further improve its international competitiveness.)
