YEONCHEON — Yeoncheon County in Gyeonggi Province has begun building a science-based safety management system that combines satellites and artificial intelligence to detect disaster risks such as ground subsidence before they occur.
The county said on the 18th that it held a demonstration of its satellite-AI convergence platform for preemptive response to ground subsidence at Jayuro Resort in Baekhak the previous day. Participants included disaster and safety officials, Inspace Co., the Korea Steep Slope Safety Association, the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology and academic experts.
The event went beyond a simple technology showcase, serving as a forum to share results from the satellite and AI disaster-safety technology accumulated so far and to review how it could be applied in actual administrative work. With climate change making natural disasters such as torrential rain and landslides more complex and varied, the county aims to shift its safety management from methods that have relied on experience and visual inspection to a data-driven system of preemptive response.
Working with Inspace, the county disclosed its progress and an early model of a digital twin-based platform for predicting ground subsidence risk, developed on the basis of a project selected for the 2026 Gyeonggi Province AI Challenge. The platform observes surface changes across wide areas by satellite, while AI analyzes accumulated data to detect minute ground movements and warning signs that are difficult to spot with the naked eye.
Officials also pointed to the approach itself as a distinguishing feature, moving away from a local government working alone by combining corporate technology, the expertise of research institutes and the field experience of specialists.
The demonstration included a run of the early model, along with feedback from departments that would actually use it, including safety, forestry and construction, and discussion of how to advance the system through expert advice. Follow-up tasks were also addressed, such as reviewing the platform's security, ways to use it in administration and the possibility of expanding it to other local governments.
The county plans to extend the system beyond ground subsidence to disaster safety as a whole. The event also introduced a strategy for advance response to water releases from the Hwanggang Dam using satellites, a water-level prediction platform and plans for a satellite-based water-level monitoring system.
Going forward, the county intends to broaden cooperation into areas including satellite-based observation of ground displacement, river water-level measurement, combined analysis of InSAR satellite data and ground measurements, water-level monitoring and flood forecasting on rivers shared by the two Koreas such as the Imjin River, and joint planning for government and provincial-level competitive projects.
"We need to move beyond responding quickly after a disaster occurs to an administration that finds risks in advance and moves a step ahead," a Yeoncheon County official said. "We will build a safety management system in Yeoncheon in which satellites see more widely, AI analyzes quickly and the administration moves fast."
