KT Launches Mobile App for Fine Dust Map

Air Map Korea provides real-time information on fine-dust levels and suggests useful information for daily lives to address rising public concerns over worsening air quality. (image: KT Corp.)

SEOUL, Feb. 18 (Korea Bizwire) — KT Corp., South Korea’s leading telecommunications company, said Monday it launched an air quality monitoring application to provide detailed information on fine dust across the nation.

The new mobile app, Air Map Korea, provides real-time information on fine-dust levels and suggests useful information for daily lives to address rising public concerns over worsening air quality.

KT has established big data on the nation’s fine dust with about 2,000 air quality monitoring stations, cooperating with local governments to cope with the harmful condition.

The company plans to add 500 monitoring stations and deploy 7,000 mobile sensors to better track air quality and combine pedestrian traffic and public data to inform safe routes to school and for strolls.

KT also vowed to beef up cooperation on a global level, in light of its signing of a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations Environment Program in December to provide the air map service in other nations.

“KT Air Map Korea project is going beyond the domestic market,” Lee Dong-myun, KT’s executive vice president of big data business support unit, said in a press briefing. “In light of the mobile app’s launch, KT will provide detailed information on fine dust and suggest ways to reduce fine dust in daily lives.”

The South Korean government warns the public to wear face masks when they go outside and urges the very young and old to stay indoors to reduce exposure to fine dust that has plagued Asia’s fourth-largest economy in recent years.

Fine dust particles are more likely to penetrate deeply into the lungs while ultrafine particles can be absorbed directly into the blood stream, posing serious health risks.

(Yonhap)