SEOUL, July 2 (Korea Bizwire) — KT Corp., a major South Korean telecom operator, said Thursday that it will start providing a big data-based ‘beach congestion traffic light’ service for 264 beaches across the country during the July-August period in collaboration with the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries.
After running the service on a trial basis at 50 beaches last year, the company decided to expand the coverage nationwide.
The service collects big data on base station wireless signals in real time for each beach and analyzes the information using an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to calculate the actual number of visitors and provide information about the degree of congestion at intervals of 30 minutes.
By enabling beachgoers to check the degree of congestion in advance, the two parties aim to encourage social distancing at beaches, which could be vulnerable to cluster infections.
There were no reported cases of virus transmission at local beaches last year.
Image Credit: Yonhap / KT / photonews@koreabizwire.com