Seoul City and 25 Autonomous Districts Promote Urban Safety Cooperation Projects

Establishing a Strategy to Strengthen On-Site Disaster Safety Systems

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced on the 28th that it held a ‘Disaster Safety System Enhancement’ meeting with district mayors, chaired by Mayor Oh Se-hoon, to strengthen Seoul’s disaster safety system with a field-centered approach, equipped with the capability to respond proactively and systematically to any disaster or accident.

At the district mayor meeting held at Seoul City Hall that day, Seoul established eight major disaster safety system enhancement strategies?aiming to ‘resolve disaster management vulnerabilities,’ ‘activate practical functions,’ and ‘improve citizen-perceived safety’?considering the characteristics of a large city such as rapid changes in climate, society, and technology, and the complexity and largeness of urban infrastructure. The strategies include ▲strengthening response to new potential risks ▲enhancing disaster safety situation rooms ▲innovating manual systems ▲expanding practical drills ▲building organic cooperation systems ▲strengthening on-site disaster response ▲reinforcing everyday safety management ▲spreading citizen-participatory safety culture. Seoul decided to jointly respond with 25 districts.

First, as a measure against new types of disasters, Seoul will identify potential risk factors and supplement vulnerabilities based on a ‘Comprehensive Urban Risk Assessment’ involving experts from various fields, thereby establishing a risk prediction and prevention response system.

Along with this, the city plans to expand professional personnel through joint duty of city and fire officials and strengthen the disaster safety situation room into a 24-hour situation room system to improve real-time risk monitoring capabilities.

Additionally, to ensure operability on-site, a simplified ‘Basic Manual’ will be created based on fundamentals and principles to replace complex disaster response manuals, and a ‘Disaster Response Task Management App’ will be developed to allow individual task assignments and real-time confirmation of action status.

The city will establish an internal disaster drill schedule to expand training for mastering action manuals and unannounced drills, and activate joint drills with 39 disaster management responsible agencies along with the city and districts, thereby strengthening disaster response capabilities through practical training expansion.

To build a disaster management cooperation system, a ‘Crisis Management Meeting’ involving key disaster response institutions such as city officials, fire, police, military, and medical institutions will be operated to establish an organic cooperation system through policy-making of on-site ideas and identification and application of potential risks.

Moreover, the disaster medical and recovery system will be strengthened to enable real-time sharing of bed information and patient transfer details, and scientific technology-based systems such as AI to determine dispatch routes and prioritize emergency calls will be used for efficient on-site disaster response.

Subsequently, the city will improve congestion in public transportation and subway stations by establishing and increasing tailored commuting routes and deploying safety management personnel, and strengthen everyday safety management by building a real-time warning system for densely crowded risk areas.

Finally, virtual disaster participation programs will be diversified, allowing citizens to experience disaster situations such as earthquakes and fires through virtual reality (VR) and escape room games, and opportunities for citizen participation will be expanded by holding safety idea ‘Citizen Contests’ to lead the spread of a safety culture.

At the meeting, each district established disaster response enhancement measures suitable for their situations, and Jongno-gu, Nowon-gu, Gwanak-gu, and Gangdong-gu presented excellent cases of disaster response enhancement.

Additionally, following the recent amendment of the ‘Outdoor Advertising Act,’ Mayor Oh and the 25 district mayors agreed on the necessity of minimum standards for managing indiscriminately posted political party banners and discussed countermeasures.

Lee Seong-heon, Chairman of the Seoul Special City District Mayors’ Council, said, “From disaster prevention to recovery and restoration, cooperation among all related agencies throughout the entire process is essential. We will actively prepare field-centered disaster safety system enhancement plans at the district level, including rapid situation dissemination, establishing close cooperation systems among agencies such as fire and police, and revising situation-specific manuals, and cooperate closely with Seoul City.”

Mayor Oh Se-hoon stated, “We have devoted much thought and effort to ensure that such tragedies never happen again,” and added, “We will create a Seoul where all citizens can live with peace of mind.” Regarding political party banners invading not only streets but also residential areas, he said, “I hope that at this meeting, measures will be discussed to reduce citizen fatigue and ensure pedestrian safety.”

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