"Preventing Voice Phishing and Responding to COVID-19 with Big Data"

Selected 10 Data Flagship Projects

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Jo] In the future, the use of big data will enable more accurate and faster prevention of financial fraud such as voice phishing, as well as responses to infectious diseases like COVID-19.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced that it has selected 10 projects for the ‘2020 Data Flagship Project,’ which discovers excellent cases contributing to the improvement of citizens' lives by utilizing data and artificial intelligence (AI) technology, and held a kickoff meeting on the 7th.

The selected projects include ‘Advancement of COVID-19 Epidemiological Investigation Support System,’ ‘Supply Chain Recommendation Service for Demand Discovery and New Product Development,’ ‘AI Legal Contract Support for SMEs,’ and ‘AI-based Voice Phishing and Smishing Detection.’ One urgent COVID-19 project will receive 680 million KRW, and the remaining nine general projects will receive an average of 360 million KRW each.

First, the ‘Data-based Epidemiological Investigation Support System’ jointly conducted by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute is characterized by utilizing related data such as location data based on communication base stations, card payment data, immigration records, and recently added electronic entry logs for high-risk group infection facilities to calculate infection routes, thereby supporting more accurate and faster epidemiological investigations during infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19.

Additionally, the Korea Credit Guarantee Fund is developing a credit evaluation service based on activity data such as production, sales, and employment so that startups and small businesses can also receive business loan services. WhoWho & Company, which operates a spam blocking app service, plans to enhance its existing AI-based voice phishing blocking function and establish a system to immediately share financial fraud-related information with the National Police Agency, the Financial Supervisory Service, and the Korea Internet & Security Agency. This project is expected to make a practical contribution to preventing the recent surge in smartphone financial fraud damages.

Other projects include AI legal contract risk analysis services for small business owners (Legal Insight), AI-based quality inspection of meteorological observation data (Korea Meteorological Administration), development of social adaptation prediction models to prevent recidivism of released prisoners (Korea Rehabilitation Welfare Corporation), coastal accident risk prediction (Korea Maritime Transportation Safety Authority), long-term care insurance demand forecasting (National Health Insurance Service), and advancement of planned real estate fraud prevention services (Korea Appraisal Board).

The Ministry of Science and ICT stated, "Data is being used as a means to solve the problems and challenges our society faces," and added, "In the era of the data economy, we plan to create leading cases of data and AI utilization through various data support projects."

The Data Flagship Project has been supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT through the National Information Society Agency since 2013 to expand the use of big data. A total of 61 projects have been supported until 2019. Representative examples include Seoul’s late-night bus deployment (2013), avian influenza spread prevention (2017), and scientific investigation support services for missing persons (2019).