Seoul will run an expert advisory body to address aging road facilities and safety issues.
Seoul said on the 25th that it will establish the city's "facility dedicated primary care" system and begin operating the policy advisory body "Safety Innovation Solution Group."
This year, the city will also operate the facility dedicated primary care system by matching 186 experts one-on-one to 215 vulnerable road facilities. The dedicated primary care experts, made up of university professors and field professionals, will conduct constant inspections from facility history management to on-site diagnostics.
The dedicated primary care system was created to fill management gaps that can occur between regular inspections and detailed diagnostics by specialized firms. It is deployed directly for inspections during vulnerable periods such as the thawing season, the rainy season, and winter, as well as for emergency inspections if an accident is feared.
The city plans to designate as priority management targets Type 1 facilities and utility tunnels that suffer major damage in accidents, aging bridges more than 30 years after completion, and facilities rated C or lower.
Over the past two years (2024–2025), the dedicated primary care system identified and corrected 1,278 risk factors in advance through a total of 620 inspections. It also reflected a total of 3,198 safety-related opinions in administration, including 1,920 expert opinions derived through 246 in-depth consultations.
Seoul will newly launch the "7th Safety Innovation Solution Group," which will be responsible for advancing policy. The group will consist of 56 experts from the public, private, and academic sectors. It will operate in four subcommittees, including policy and systems, AI and smart technology, and maintenance. Through this, the city plans to reflect social issues such as climate change and disasters in road facility safety policy.
This year, the group will set preventive road facility maintenance based on artificial intelligence (AI) as its annual main theme and conduct research and presentations by subcommittee. Seoul will serve as the secretariat and support follow-up implementation of proposed policies.
Han Byung-yong, head of Seoul's Disaster and Safety Office, said, "We will leverage AI technology to raise the level of road facility safety management by one notch and build an environment that citizens can trust and use."