The Korea Environment Corporation's National Water Industry Cluster will fully launch a "Demonstration Facility Digital Advancement Project" to strengthen the digital technology competitiveness of domestic water companies, the cluster said Wednesday.
The core of the project is to integrate and upgrade key Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies — including artificial intelligence (AI), digital twin, the Internet of Things (IoT), and cloud environments — with the existing water management demonstration support facility infrastructure.
With the global water market's core competitiveness shifting toward integrated data management and optimization capabilities across entire processes, the cluster expects the project to serve as a strong growth momentum for domestic water companies.
The project pursues a multidimensional, phased upgrade that improves physical infrastructure to preemptively produce high-quality data, integrates it with information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, and ultimately links it to AI analysis.
Under the annual roadmap, this year will begin with the establishment of an Information System Master Plan (ISMP) and the design of physical infrastructure improvements. Next year, major upgrades to the physical infrastructure of key demonstration facilities will secure the foundation for data production.
In 2028, ICT infrastructure for data linkage will be built and undergo integrated testing. By 2029, an AI-driven intelligent demonstration support system based on actual operational data will be finalized.
"We will concentrate our capabilities to ensure that a complete phased upgrade — encompassing demonstration-tailored improvements of physical facilities through to AI intelligence — can be carried out," said Lee Je-won, head of the National Water Industry Cluster Project Group.
