About 150 volunteers participated in the dry run of an early warning system that will include 909 CCTV cameras in 71 locations by year-end, aiming to analyse crowd movement and density before alerting authorities to signs of danger.
Sixteen areas will be specially monitored by officials ready to intervene and disperse people in response to warnings triggered when three or more individuals are counted in every sq m of any given space.
“It used to be visual assessment in the past, but now we’re operating CCTV … which enables video analysis,” said city safety official Ahn Hyoung-jun, adding that the information gathered would compensate for human error.
The effort was “positive”, said Paek Seung-joo, a specialist in fire and disaster protection at the Open Cyber University of Korea, while warning that preventing large gatherings was critical.
“The fundamental solution is to prevent it from happening in the first place.”
The plan unveiled this week covers just Seoul, rather than the entire nation, he added.
“For that, the central government, not a local government, has to take the lead and come up with a plan to anticipate crowding, manage it, and respond in the event of an emergency.”
Many families of the victims of last year’s disaster say the police investigation left many questions unanswered, while deploring that nobody had been held responsible for the deaths.
The government, which rejected calls to dismiss top officials, has said it had worked hard to set up a system to prevent such disasters and which needed to be properly implemented.
Source: CNA
