Left: Red squares indicate the locations where potholes are detected; Right: A pothole is patched up after repairsYONGIN SPECIAL CITY
A pothole that a village bus lurched over in the morning vanished in the afternoon — with the help of an AI-powered road management system.
On the morning of May 29, village Bus No. 31-2 ran over a pothole measuring about 0.5 square meters (5.3 feet) on a road near Guseong Station in Yongin, Gyeonggi. A closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera mounted underneath the bus immediately detected the apshalt damage and automatically relayed the location to the city’s road management system. Within hours, repair crews arrived and patched the road.
Yongin city has seen fewer complaints about damaged roads and potholes since introducing an AI-based road hazard monitoring system last year.
The system uses real-time kinematic (RTK) positioning technology, AI-powered video monitoring devices and global positioning system (GPS) equipment to detect and analyze potholes and other road surface damage in real time. The devices are installed on public buses and city-operated vehicles. It streamlines the process from report registrations to repair operations.
The city of Yongin first introduced the system on 100 city buses in April of last year. It was later expanded to 53 village buses and 147 municipal vehicles in September and October of the same year.
Since then, pothole-related complaints lodged through "e-People," the state-run online petition platform, have fallen by 19 percent on year, from 2,260 cases in 2024 to 1,824 last year. Compensation payouts given to people who suffered damage from road defects also declined 25 percent on year, from 880 million won ($581,700) in 2024 to about 660 million won last year.
A poster for AI-based road management run by the Yongin city governmentYONGIN SPECIAL CITY
“RTK technology can pinpoint the location of road hazards detected by AI with centimeter-level precision, which minimizes errors and enables authorities to identify road damage in a timely manner,” said road-management solution firm Milliway and telecommunication service provider LG U+. The two firms deployed the system in Yongin.
While conventional global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), including GPS, can have location errors of up to 15 meters, RTK reduces inaccuracies by linking dedicated devices with ground-based reference stations in real time. The system also offers broader, more accurate monitoring than fixed CCTV cameras because it relies on vehicles moving throughout the city.
Other local governments, including the provincial authority of Jeju Island, have recently begun adopting similar systems that use AI-equipped government vehicles to identify road damage.
Yongin’s management system goes beyond simply filling potholes. Once repairs are completed, other buses traveling the same route are used to verify the work. The resulting data is accumulated to monitor road conditions over time.
A repair worker fixes a pothole that was detected and managed by an AI-based system in Yongin, Gyeonggi.YONGIN SPECIAL CITY
Duplicate complaints submitted through the state-run petition platform are merged and managed in a single system.
“Under the previous system, pothole complaints submitted through the state-run system typically took seven to 14 days to reach the repair stage,” a Yongin city official said.
“With the AI-based road hazard monitoring system, photos and videos captured by CCTV cameras allow us to immediately identify the extent and location of damage. It reduced the repair timeline to one or two days.”
The official noted that Yongin is the first city to establish this kind of integrated system.
Beginning this month, Yongin is expanding the platform to cover additional categories of public complaints filed through the state-run petition platform, including damaged public fixtures and animal carcass removal.
In October, the city plans to introduce an automated system to verify the accuracy of road repair process data and to manage project completion.
“We will continue expanding smart administrative services that residents can directly experience,” the city official said.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
