Changwon Special City Selected for Drone Demonstration City Construction Project

Changwon Special City in Gyeongnam has been finally selected for the 2023 Drone Demonstration City Construction Project hosted by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, receiving approximately 1.4 billion KRW in national funding.

The project supports drone utilization demonstrations tailored to regional characteristics. This year, 40 local governments nationwide applied, and 15 were ultimately selected. Changwon Special City is the only one from Gyeongnam. The project period is planned to officially start in April and continue until November 30.

The city aims to build a "Happy Changwon City for People" through smart logistics and integrated disaster safety management by dividing the project into ▲demonstration of a smart integrated logistics system for island areas and ▲demonstration of integrated disaster safety management monitoring in logistics and safety sectors.

The demonstration of the smart integrated logistics system for island areas plans to provide public and private drone logistics delivery services on Sillido Island, Gusan-myeon, Masanhappo-gu.

This aims to overcome geographical obstacles in providing urgent goods and to demonstrate logistics delivery services for individual parcels. After demonstrating delivery services from the mainland to the island, the commercialization model will be expanded to enable reverse logistics of fresh seafood harvested from the island back to the mainland.

The disaster safety management monitoring project plans to implement a rapid response system through continuous drone monitoring of disasters and emergencies such as wildfires, illegal harvesting in fish farms, marine pollution, and pine wilt disease occurring in marine and mountainous areas around the Gusan 119 Safety Center.

With the recent increase in fire incidents and the mass death of sardines in Masan Bay last year, the need for safety management is rising, and this project is expected to present a new model for public disaster safety management services.

Additionally, a control center will be pilot-established within Masanhappo-gu Office to manage the entire project integrally. In the future, integrated control centers will be additionally established for each of the five district zones.

After the demonstration city project ends, the city plans to secure its own budget to support delivery cost subsidies to continue the drone delivery service.

In 2021, the city was selected for the "Drone Special Free Zone Designation Contest Project" and has been conducting demonstration projects with its own budget in two zones: the lower Nakdong River area near Bukmyeon Waterfront Ecological Park and the Masan Bay area. Being selected for this drone demonstration city construction project is expected to create synergy and further develop the future new industry of aerial mobility.

Mayor Hong Nam-pyo said, “The city has strengths in logistics industries utilizing land routes and Jinhae port logistics industries utilizing sea routes due to the concentration of logistics companies. With this project selection, we can now implement logistics delivery services utilizing air routes as well.”

He added, “Starting with the drone demonstration city project, we will lay the foundation for fostering the drone service industry and will continuously strive not only to complete demonstrations but also to bring demonstration models to actual commercialization.”

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