Seoul Invests in high-precision location information

As Global Navigation Satellite Systems becomes more generalised and high-tech surveying techniques become more advanced, the Seoul Metropolitan Government has decided to establish its own Network Real Time Kinematic (RTK) system in an effort to provide high-precision location information for better and improved decision making in the city government.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government is the first city to establish an RTK network of such kind before any other local governments in South Korea. Dae-Hyun Nam, Director of the Land Management Division at the Seoul Metropolitan Government, told FutureGov that the local government invested an estimated amount of ₩ 540,000,000 (US$ 500,000) for its establishment in 2008. Two years later, the RTK Network system was further enhanced by establishing a reference station at Yongsan-gu. “The purpose of the RTK Network system is to create a location-based infrastructure that would provide critical spatial elements needed in arriving at well-informed decisions. In addition, it also aims to settle the dispute of land boundaries that supply high precision use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to citizens,” he said.
According to Director Dae-Hyun Nam, at present, there are five GNSS Reference Stations installed at four suburb places namely Dobong-gu, Songpa-gu, Geumcheon-gu, Gangseo-gu, and one central station at Yongsan-gu. The System server on the other hand, is located in the Seoul Data Centre. “The Land Management Division manages this system with the Internal Administration Network. We provide the correction data for RTK Surveying through the Internet and RINEX (Receiver Independent Exchange Format) for post- processing through the web.” “Our Reference Stations use Trimble Zephyr Geodetic Mark II GNSS antenna which is protected by a protection dome capable of receiving the broadcast signal from all satellite navigations, such as GPS (USA), GLONASS (Russia), and Galileo (EU) among others.”
In order to guarantee the integrity of the information, Director Dae-Hyun Nam says that each station is equipped with the real-time displacement monitoring system. “We will continue innovating our efforts for the safety and happiness of Seoul citizens by way of applying the Network RTK System and the real-time displacement monitoring system to super-size buildings, bridges, and major cultural properties, among others,” he said.

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