Suwon Mayor Lee Jae-jun speaks at the 2025 Suwon AI Governance Forum in July last year on the theme of AI for all. [Suwon City]
Suwon Mayor Lee Jae-jun speaks at the 2025 Suwon AI Governance Forum in July last year on the theme of AI for all. [Suwon City]

Generative AI services — from ChatGPT and Gemini to Claude and Perplexity — have woven themselves into daily life, and more people than ever are turning to them to search for information and produce content.

Suwon Mayor Lee Jae-jun says his city intends to lead that transformation. "Suwon will become an innovative city that dramatically improves citizens' daily lives and safety through AI," Lee said. "We will build a city where AI permeates everyday life — and set a new national standard for AI in Korea."

For Suwon residents, that future is arriving fast. Within six months, AI will be detecting potholes, patrolling parks, sending personalized billing notices and serving as a personal administrative assistant.

Starting in early next year, Suwon will use AI to monitor its roads for potholes around the clock. The city plans to deploy an AI-powered intelligent pothole detection platform that analyzes video footage continuously.

Suwon launched a project in May to build the platform, which it aims to complete by the end of this year. The system is designed to process pothole-related information quickly and accurately.

AI-powered pothole detection in Suwon. [Suwon City]
AI-powered pothole detection in Suwon. [Suwon City]

The platform will draw on footage from closed-circuit cameras along Suwon's roads as well as cameras mounted on detection vehicles, automatically identifying potholes using AI. It will also visualize pothole locations and severity on a map and provide integrated management of repair status.

Once in place, the system will let the city manage potholes far more quickly and effectively than before. The previous approach relied mainly on citizen reports and observations from passing vehicles. The new platform will let AI analyze footage and flag problems in real time, overcoming the limits of a finite workforce and fleet of equipment across Suwon's 951-kilometer road network.

Hyowon Park in Suwon's Paldal-gu district will gain a new nighttime guardian by the end of this year: an autonomous patrol robot. The city plans to deploy the robot during hours when safety oversight is weakest, using AI to minimize blind spots and create a safer environment for park visitors.

Suwon has been pursuing the project since June, after winning a competitive grant from the Korea Institute for Robot Industry Advancement's AI robot demonstration program in the service sector. The city secured 100 million won ($70,700) in national funding to run the pilot.

The service centers on a four-legged AI robot that patrols Hyowon Park at night. The robot independently covers major walking paths, plazas and sports facilities, scanning for anomalies without leaving blind spots. When it detects something unusual, it immediately alerts the relevant authorities — notifying the park management division of damaged facilities, the fire department if someone has collapsed or a fire breaks out, and police if an assault or fight occurs.

The city will deploy the robot by the end of the year to begin the demonstration. It plans to operate the AI patrol robot for three years and, based on the results, consider expanding the program to other parks.

By the end of this year, residents will also be able to use an AI-powered administrative chatbot on the Suwon city website. The service will function like a personal administrative assistant, making it easy to find essential lifestyle and government information at any time.

The city is building the service — tentatively named "Saebitbot" — with a target launch of December. Rather than relying on keyword searches, the chatbot is designed to understand the intent and context behind a user's question and respond with a structured, logical answer.

The generative AI behind the chatbot will be trained on the vast amount of information on the city's website. Based on an analysis of site usage last year, 10 high-interest categories will form the core training data, including city news, jobs, information services, Suwon tourism, and events and festivals. A high-performance AI model with strong Korean-language comprehension will learn the content and present it in a user-friendly way.

The service will also support multilingual communication — in English, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese in addition to Korean — so that foreign residents can use it with ease. After confirming the service's effectiveness, Suwon plans to expand the chatbot to other sections of its website.

The city's billing notification system is also getting an AI upgrade. A project launched in June to enhance AI-based personalized mobile electronic notices will wrap up by the end of this year, after which billing notices will be sent in a tailored way based on each recipient's characteristics and reading patterns.

Suwon introduced its mobile electronic notice service in November 2024 and currently provides 33 types of notices and guidance, including local tax arrears and vehicle tax payment reminders and penalty notices for bus-lane or parking violations. The system has made it more convenient for residents to check notices while cutting postal costs.

To take the service further, the city is building an AI-based predictive model engine. The AI will analyze past data — including send, open and payment histories — to recommend the optimal notification method and timing for each individual. It will also structure a multi-stage resend process based on whether a recipient acts after opening a notice, boosting overall delivery rates.

For digitally vulnerable residents, the city plans to offer large-print, mobile audio and foreign-language notice options, and to expand delivery channels beyond Kakao to include Naver, improving accessibility for all citizens.

AI is also being put to work protecting Hwaseong Fortress — a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of Suwon's greatest treasures. The city has installed a three-dimensional digital twin smart automated monitoring system for disaster prevention and security across the entire Hwaseong zone.

The system links disaster-safety infrastructure to a virtual replica of Hwaseong Fortress — a digital twin — to manage risks in real time. AI video analysis technology detects a range of hazards, including unauthorized intrusion, fire, people collapsing and crowd gatherings. Administrators can quickly pinpoint exact locations within the virtual space and respond to on-site situations in real time.

The Janganmun gate and fortress walls receive particularly close attention. The city has added inclinometers, vibration sensors and thermal imaging cameras to detect subtle changes early, and the system automatically broadcasts on-site warnings when a sudden safety incident occurs.

The AI-powered disaster safety network is also being extended to other key infrastructure across Suwon.


fob140@heraldcorp.com