"Identifying Manholes"... High-Resolution Aerial Images of the National Territory to Be Captured Annually from Now On

(Data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport)

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Jiwon] The National Geographic Information Institute of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced on the 12th that starting next year, it plans to capture 12cm-class high-resolution aerial images (aerial photographs and orthophotos) annually to lay the foundation for realizing a digital twin national land.

Aerial photographs are digital photos of the national land taken using cameras mounted on aircraft, and orthophotos are continuous images corrected for distortions that occurred during the aerial photography.

This plan is part of the Korean New Deal comprehensive plan, designed to realize a digital twin national land that implements all national land data including ground, underground, indoor, and aerial spaces.

So far, the National Geographic Information Institute has been capturing aerial images of the entire national land to accurately understand the current status and monitor changes.

Aerial images are used not only to support public services such as the National Property Management System (Ministry of Economy and Finance), Smart Farm Map (Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs), and National Tax Administration System (National Tax Service), but also in daily life through portal video maps and tourist guides.

Before 2000, aerial images were taken every 20 years as black-and-white images (resolution 70cm), but after 2000, they were upgraded to black-and-white images (resolution 40cm) every 4 to 5 years, and in the 2010s, to color images (resolution 25cm) every 2 years.

Starting next year, the aerial image capture cycle will be shortened from 2 years to 1 year. The resolution of aerial images in urban areas, where the digital twin national land is highly utilized, will be increased to 12cm-class to provide high-quality aerial image services.

This will enable identification of road facilities such as manholes, and it is expected to be applied to the 4th industrial sector by integrating with new technologies such as digital twin and deep learning-based automatic detection of national land changes.

In particular, shortening the capture cycle to 1 year will preserve the changes in the national land viewed from the sky annually in high-resolution images, allowing a more vivid record of the history of Korea's national land.

Public institutions will be able to use high-resolution aerial images free of charge every year, which is expected to improve administrative efficiency. It will also save 23 billion KRW in aerial photography budgets that each institution had separately promoted.

Sagong Hosang, Director of the National Geographic Information Institute at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, emphasized, "Going forward, we plan to actively work to create various new industries such as construction, aviation, logistics, defense, safety, and energy by integrating with 4th industrial technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, Internet of Things, augmented reality, and virtual reality."

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