Detecting 'Donggong' Causing Ground Subsidence 5 Times Faster... Korea's First 'AI Analysis Technology' Introduced

Seoul City and Sejong University Develop Automated Analysis Program ... Time Reduced from 5 Days to 1 Day

[Asia Economy Reporter Jo In-kyung] The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 10th that it has developed the country's first 'AI (Artificial Intelligence)-based automatic cavern analysis program' that explores underground voids called 'donggong (洞空)', which cause ground subsidence, at a speed five times faster than before, and has introduced it on-site since March.

The city developed this program in collaboration with Sejong University by participating in a national research and development project from 2015 to 2019 aimed at developing road collapse risk assessment and analysis technology.

Previously, cavern exploration involved manually analyzing data collected through exploration equipment, taking five days to survey and analyze about a 10 km section. Now, artificial intelligence automatically analyzes the data, drastically reducing the analysis time to one day.

Since introducing this program, Seoul has conducted investigations on a total of 18 km sections (16 locations) and discovered 13 caverns. In the future, it plans to conduct cavern exploration in areas requiring urgent investigation, such as road collapse sites, or in complaint areas requested by autonomous districts.

Since 2015, the city has been preventing ground subsidence by introducing cavern exploration technology for the first time in Korea to detect and address caverns in advance. With the introduction of this AI technology, simultaneous investigation and rapid analysis are expected to further enhance road safety.

In particular, the city plans to increase the AI automatic analysis accuracy, which currently shows a level similar to expert analysis (over 80%), to over 90% through artificial intelligence learning.

Kim Hak-jin, Director of Safety General Office of Seoul, said, "Underground caverns are risk factors causing ground subsidence, so rapid preventive management is more important than anything else," adding, "We will create safe roads through scientific investigation and analysis methods."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.