[Smart City Today]

"K-Guard", an application that informs people of various dangers in daily life, such as flooding, fire, and disappearance, has been developed for safe public life.

The technology demonstration of "K-Guard", developed by a domestic research team, is underway with the goal of pilot service next year.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced on August 25 that it will demonstrate a life safety service that informs and prevents safety risks in daily life for three months from August in the Seo-gu in ​​Daegu and Baeknyeon Village in Indongchon, together with the Land & Housing Institute and Daegu Metropolitan City.

K-Guard, a life safety risk prevention service app developed by ETRI, provides 11 types of services according to local characteristics, including ▲ flood risk ▲ fire risk ▲ daily safety ▲ Safety for single households, and ▲ missing accidents.

In particular, this service is customized to the user and provides various safety risks in daily life according to the individual's safety vulnerability, such as the user's location, age, and disability.

Even with the same risk, it is expected to get a great response by providing a notification that the risk level is higher for the blind, crutches/wheelchair users, pregnant women, and the elderly with high safety vulnerabilities.

'K-Guard' provides automatic notifications near danger points by voice, vibration, text, etc. according to the user’s choice without running the app, so the user can pay attention to safety risks often.

The daily safety service contributes to community safety by notifying the dangers exposed throughout the neighborhood through voluntary participation such as users' active reporting for the safety of our neighborhood.

When a user reports to the app by taking photos of nearby risk factors such as sinkholes, manhole breakage, and exposure to electric wires and glass fragments, the location is automatically recognized based on GPS and real-time notification is provided to pedestrians in the area.

For example, it is possible to report the risk of falling due to damage to pedestrian paths such as sidewalks, stairs, and construction sites, or accidents where the manhole cover is opened in case of flooding.

Through this, it is possible to prevent safety accidents by receiving notifications and bypassing them with caution when the blind, the elderly, or nearby pedestrians pass through the area.

ETRI developed this platform based on standards to provide services in connection with the information systems established by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and the Korea Meteorological Administration.

In fact, safety services such as △ fire, △ flooding, △ air quality, and △ slope risk provided by "K-Guard" utilized data collected through data and sensors established by government ministries and public institutions.

Since it was developed based on standards, it is possible to effectively link and expand with the public information system, and it can respond quickly when applying new services in the future, the researchers explained.

ETRI is currently conducting a 'K-Guard' service demonstration at Seo-gu in Daegu City and Baeknyeon Village in Indongchon together with a joint research institute.

200 members of the experience group participating in the demonstration use the 'K-Guard' app for three months and provide help such as securing data and reporting errors to increase usability and stability.

The research team plans to provide the improved 'K-Guard' app as a pilot service next year by enhancing the completeness and convenience of the app by improving the user interface (UI) and complementing points derived through demonstration.

This research was carried out with the support of the Ministry of the Interior and Security “Life Safety Prevention Service Technology Development Project (research period: 5 years R&D expenses about 21 billion won)”.

ETRI utilized the city safety infrastructure built as a “smart city innovation growth engine project” by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to develop the 'K-Guard' service.

"With the development of ICT, citizen participatory activities were greatly activated, and through a standard-based service structure, various disasters and safety data of the government, local governments, and public institutions were interconnected to ensure interoperability," said Kim Hyung-joon, director of ETRI Intelligent Convergence Research Institute. He also said, "The K-Guard service is meaningful in that it goes beyond the government-led disaster response public safety service and provides the foundation technology to create a safer community on its own in a citizen-participating manner for the safety around daily life.".