SK Telecom Joins Forces with North Gyeongsang Provincial Police Agency to Contain COVID-19 Spread

SK Telecom announced on March 23 that it will provide Geovision, a big data-based real-time floating population analysis service, to North Gyeongsang Provincial Police Agency, free of charge, until the Korean government declares the end of the COVID-19 crisis.

The collaboration between SK Telecom and the police agency comes as a result of their joint efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19. SK Telecom has been providing Geovision since March 9 to Gyeongsan Police Station within North Gyeongsang Province and will begin providing the service to all police stations in the Province on March 23. Moreover, the company is currently in discussions with the Korean National Police Agency to expand the use of Geovision to all police stations across the nation.

Geovision is a powerful big data and spatial data analysis service. By analyzing communication data generated between mobile phones and base stations on a real time basis, it offers accurate location-based services and is thus being widely used in areas including trade area analysis and demographic statistics.

Geovision is capable of analyzing real-time floating population of any area across the country every five minutes. It is applied with the company’s self-developed big data analysis platform named GIRAF (Geo Intelligence Rapid Analytics __framework), which can analyze up to 60 terabytes of data every five minutes and deliver visualized data results to clients.

The service is also applied with pCell, a mobile network technology that accurately calculates the number of people located within a targeted area by virtually partitioning each base station's coverage area into lattices measuring 10x10 meters.

Geovision will help Gyeongbuk Provincial Police Agency contain the spread of coronavirus by pinpointing the areas with a dense floating population to enhance the efficiency of patrol operations. For instance, upon detecting (unusually) crowded places in real-time, the police agencies can dispatch officers to the scene to implement proper measures to reduce people’s risk of catching the virus.

“We are doing what we can as an ICT company to help relieve the current situation with coronavirus,” said Chang Hong-sung, vice president and head of Ad/Data Business Division of SK Telecom. “We will continue to make the best efforts to contribute to enhancing people’s safety and happiness by using our cutting-edge ICT.”