Seoul City 'S-Map' Provides Street View Service for 14,699 'Small Alleyways'

50,715 Street View Installations Covering 674km of Alleys Across Seoul Including Traditional Markets
Safety Facility Information Such as CCTV, Emergency Bells, Security Lights, and Emotional Data on Cleanliness and Convenience Also Surveyed

Jongno-gu Ikseon-dong and Seongdong-gu Yongdap-dong Alley Area Street View Construction

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] Street views of over 14,000 ‘small alleyways’ across Seoul, including narrow alleys difficult for vehicles to enter, traditional markets, and stair roads, are now available on Seoul’s ‘S-Map’ service.

On the 22nd, Seoul City announced that it had completed the construction of ‘citizen-experienced alleyway spatial information’ covering 14,699 alley locations across Seoul, with a total length of 674.1 km, over the past two years. This alleyway spatial information project was carried out through the Digital New Deal public job program. Young people facing difficulties due to COVID-19 participated in collecting and digitizing the data. These youths received education and work experience in spatial information construction, while citizens gained access to alleyway spatial information that was previously unavailable.

Seoul City has built 53,715 street views of alleyways throughout the city. It also identified the location information of safety facilities within the alleys, such as 6,585 CCTVs, 23,169 security lights, and 1,095 emergency bells. Additionally, the characteristics of the alleyways were surveyed by scoring five categories, including cleanliness and spaciousness.

Seoul City plans to link this data with information from other institutions such as the Ministry of the Interior and Safety’s Living Safety Map and the Police Agency’s CPTED, and use it to analyze pedestrian environments and crime-vulnerable areas to install additional safety facilities like security lights, CCTVs, and emergency bells. It is expected to contribute to protecting socially vulnerable groups by providing basic data for setting safe return routes in areas densely populated by single-person households or for optimal crime prevention routes established by Safe Village Guardians.

Seoul City will process the constructed data and start providing alleyway street view services from the 23rd for 10 autonomous districts in the Gangbuk area, including Jongno-gu. The alleyway street views for the remaining 14 autonomous districts in the Gangnam area will be sequentially provided to citizens by June. These can be accessed via the Smart Seoul Map. Additionally, within the first half of the year, the data will be shared with private portals to enable citizens to receive broad services anytime and anywhere.

Seoul City plans to continuously build such spatial information together with citizens. Especially this year, themed services related to tourism, safety, and culture will be provided within the year. Street view services will be offered so citizens can see trails (tourism), district-specific handcrafted shoes, and comic streets (culture), and crime-vulnerable areas (safety) will be analyzed to install additional safety facilities such as emergency bells.

Park Jong-su, Director of Seoul City’s Smart City Policy Division, said, “The alleyway information construction project, promoted through public-private collaboration, provided education and jobs to young people during the COVID-19 era and offered citizens alleyway spatial information that did not exist before. We will do our best to continuously produce and disclose such spatial information to establish a foundation for solving urban issues such as safety and traffic, and ultimately improve the quality of life for citizens.”

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