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Busan Metropolitan City Launches “Smart Ocean Village,” a Data-Driven Intelligent Marine Environment Management Platform

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Busan Metropolitan City (Mayor Park Heong-joon) announced that the Smart Ocean Village platform service—developed to support scientific decision-making on marine-environment issues in the Busan area and to build a sustainable management system through citizen participation—officially launched today, 27 June.

The Smart Ocean Village platform is the first citizen-communication-type intelligent platform in the country to be developed under the leadership of a local government. Through ongoing functional upgrades and service expansion, it aims to establish an integrated marine-environment management system in which the public, private sector, and industry work together.

Planned as a new initiative to expand smart villages, the city has developed the platform since 2024 in cooperation with the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST) under the “Data-Based Intelligent Marine Environment Management Support Platform Development Project.”

This project delivers integrated marine-environment monitoring data for the Busan region—including information on floating debris, marine fine dust, and local marine-industry trends—provides location-based fine-dust data and citizen-participation services such as marine clean-up activities, and supports data-driven analysis and scientific decision-making related to marine-environment information.

The Smart Ocean Village platform (sov-busan.co.kr) gathers and processes marine-environment big data from diverse sources and presents it in an easy-to-understand visual format through the following services:

• Land-Based Floating-Waste Monitoring: Using CCTV, satellite imagery, drones, and other sensor-based big data combined with image-classification AI, the service analyzes the quantity and distribution of land-based floating waste entering and exiting the Nakdong River estuary and provides sea-cleanliness information captured by drones.

• Marine Fine-Dust Monitoring: By integrating environmental satellite images with ground-based air-quality data, the service visualizes real-time fine-dust information by administrative district and along the Galmaetgil trail, tailored to user locations. The project also supports the development of marine fine-dust monitoring technology using ground LiDAR and the creation of carbon-emission statistical maps derived from maritime traffic data, providing a scientific basis for air-quality management and policy formulation in port and coastal areas.

• Regional Marine-Industry Issue Analysis: The platform compiles marine-related keywords, statistical data, news, and publications from multiple sources to identify key marine-environment and industry issues in the Busan area. Results are presented as map-based story-map content that can serve both as policy reference material and as educational resources for students.

• Citizen Participation: Available via the mobile app “Smart Ocean Village Busan,” this feature allows citizens to register and share information on their marine clean-up activities. It also provides location-based fine-dust alerts and a marine fine-dust information-sharing function, thereby increasing citizen engagement and enabling two-way communication.

To mark the launch of the Smart Ocean Village platform, Busan Metropolitan City is holding a membership-registration event from 27 June to 11 July and plans to promote platform use through marine-related events in the future. Anyone who signs up during the event period and applies on the event page will be entered into a draw to receive coffee coupons and other prizes, with about 100 winners selected.

The platform development project was presented as the city’s voluntary commitment in the “Marine Digital” sector at the 10th Our Ocean Conference, a high-level global marine forum held at BEXCO in April, further enhancing Busan’s stature as a global maritime hub.

Shim Seong-tae, Director General of the Ocean and Fisheries Bureau of Busan Metropolitan City, said, “By establishing the Smart Ocean Village platform, we have integrated and linked previously fragmented marine-environment data in Busan, creating a system that allows users to understand and utilize the data easily. We will continue to expand target services to foster data-based scientific decision-making and participatory service-management systems, doing our utmost to spread smart marine services and accelerate the digital transformation of the marine industry.”