Current Status of Landslide Early Warning and Safe Evacuation Research in South Korea

Based on the climate change adaptation report, South Korea's annual mean temperature in the late 21st century is likely to rise by 2.3 to 6.3 °C compared to current levels, while annual average precipitation is expected to rise by 4 to 16 % relative to the current mean. Increased precipitation reduces frictional resistance and elevates moisture content in slopes, increasing the strain on top slope sections and greatly increasing the potential of landslides.

Under Article 32-6 of the Republic of Korea's Forest Protection Act Enforcement Decree, landslide warning system are classified into three stages: advisory, preliminary warning, and warning, based on soil moisture limits of 80, 90, and 100%, respectively. Nonetheless, soil moisture is heavily influenced by site-specific soil features like permeability and groundwater level, limiting its capacity to anticipate localized conditions.

In order to secure a golden time for readiness through early prediction of landslides, which are highly sensitive to climate change, and to reduce casualties by evacuating residents quickly and safely, the Korea Forest Service launched a field-response technology development project in 2025. The goal of this project is to build technology for AIoT-based real-time risk monitoring, an audio-visual warning system, and evacuation-route guidance to optimize safe evacuation from landslide. For this research, a test site was chosen in the Triassic granite area of Cheongsong, Gyeongsangbuk-do, South Korea. The project involves setting up in-situ soil moisture measurement devices, developing a next-generation alram technique that combines audio-visual warning devices with soil moisture measurement, and building an early warning system with a LoRa-based IoT wireless sensing network.

 

Acknowledgement

This study was conducted with the support of the R&D program for Forest Science & Technology (No.RS-2025-02233085)