Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology (KICT) said on the 24th that it developed the "Korean integrated water management platform (IWRM-K, Integrated Water Resources Management-Korea)" to address increasingly complex water issues caused by climate change and urbanization.
Conventional water management focused on sector-by-sector responses such as securing water quantity, responding to floods, and improving water quality. Recently, however, floods and droughts have been repeating within the same watershed, and water management has also become linked to ecosystems, energy consumption, and carbon emissions, increasing the need for an integrated management system.
IWRM-K is designed to analyze water management elements—such as water quantity, water quality, aquatic ecology, floods, droughts, and carbon emissions—within a single system. It uses digital technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), big data, climate change scenarios, hydrologic and hydraulic models, satellite imagery, and geographic information systems (GIS), to evaluate the impacts of policy alternatives and support decision-making.
Researchers at the KICT water resources and rivers research division analyzed 30 years of hydrologic data for the Nakdong River basin and applied climate change scenarios to forecast the future water environment through 2100. Based on this, they developed an integrated water management index that comprehensively evaluates water supply and demand, river water security levels, and management status.
The research also analyzed carbon emissions generated throughout the entire water use cycle. A pilot analysis estimated that carbon emissions from Korea's water cycle in 2030 would be equivalent to the annual greenhouse gases emitted by about 2.5 million passenger cars.
Alongside this, the team developed AI-based precipitation forecasting technology and watershed-level flood management technology. Applied to the 2022 Typhoon Hinnamnor case, precipitation forecasting accuracy improved from 45% to 52%. The team also proposed ways to operate dams stably while reducing downstream damage through AI-based simulations. They developed river vegetation analysis technology using satellite imagery and 3D scans and conducted a demonstration study in the Gamcheon basin in Gimcheon, North Gyeongsang, to assess future flood level changes and vulnerable sections.
KICT President Park Seon-gyu said, "IWRM-K is an infrastructure that technically supports water management policy and a system that can quantitatively compare and evaluate the effectiveness of various management options," adding, "We expect it can be used to respond to complex water issues such as worsening floods and droughts driven by climate change."