Pohang City Mandates Installation of Flood Prevention Barriers for New Building Constructions!

Effective from October 24... New Buildings Must Install Underground Spaces Such as Basement Parking Exposed Above Ground

Installation of flood prevention barriers will be mandatory for new building constructions. (Photo of flood barrier installation at Lotte Department Store)

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Dongguk Lee] Pohang City has established measures such as mandatory installation of flood prevention barriers for buildings to protect citizens' lives and property from natural disasters like increasingly frequent localized heavy rains, and will implement them starting from the 24th.

Accordingly, from now on, when applying for a building permit, the building owner must establish rainwater inflow prevention measures against heavy rain and mandatorily install flood prevention barriers in underground spaces exposed above ground such as underground parking lots and sunken areas (Sunken: areas excavated and created to guide natural light underground).

Buildings of 16 floors or more or over 5,000㎡ used by an unspecified large number of people are required to place electrical rooms and generator rooms above ground, while for other buildings this is recommended. Additionally, flood prevention measures must be established and submitted, and approval for use requires confirmation by supervision.

The city also actively encourages the installation of flood prevention barriers in existing buildings with underground spaces and plans to additionally promote projects supporting installation costs through ordinance enactment when installing flood prevention barriers.

Park Sang-gu, Director of the Architectural Design Division, said, “Pohang is located downstream where rivers flow into the sea, making it a terrain vulnerable to localized heavy rains. Therefore, we have prepared new building permit standards to prepare for this and will do our best to create a safe city Pohang by blocking building flooding caused by localized heavy rains.”

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