[Provided by Sokcho City]
[Provided by Sokcho City]

"In maritime accidents, what matters most is how quickly and accurately the search area can be defined immediately after the incident," Sokcho Mayor Lee Byeong-seon said.

Sokcho City announced Tuesday it had been selected for the Ministry of Science and ICT's "Digital Safety Leading Model Development" grant program, securing 580 million won ($406,000) in government funding.

The selected project is titled "Development of Location Tracking and Drift Prediction Technology for the Rapid Search of Missing Persons in Coastal and Maritime Accidents." Its core aim is to use AI to predict the movement paths of maritime missing persons and display the results on Sokcho's digital twin platform.

The total project budget is around 700 million won, with work set to run through the end of December.

The research area covers a 1-square-kilometer stretch of sea off Sokcho Beach.

Researchers plan to deploy three types of human-shaped mannequins — designed to simulate floating and sinking — along with drift buoys, collecting real-time data on the paths and timing of their movement with ocean currents.

The field experiments will involve 60 mannequin deployments totaling 2,310 hours and four drift buoy deployments totaling 280 hours. The collected data will be compared against ocean forecasting data from the Korea Hydrographic and Oceanographic Agency to predict detailed drift paths suited to actual maritime conditions.

The city plans to combine the verified field data with AI technology to develop scenarios that infer the expected location and movement path of a missing person at sea. Predicted results will be displayed on Sokcho's digital twin platform so relevant agencies can quickly determine search ranges and response strategies when an incident occurs.

The project is particularly significant in that it extends the scope of the digital twin platform — previously centered on land-based spatial data — to cover maritime areas as well.


fob140@heraldcorp.com