Science ministry doubles disaster-response R&D budget to 5.1 billion won for 2027

South Korea's science ministry said Monday it will roughly double spending on a program that sends the country's most experienced engineers into disaster zones, opening a 2027 round of 13 new projects with a budget of 5.1 billion won ($3.85 million).

The Ministry of Science and ICT said the money funds the expansion of the EXPERT program, which uses licensed professional engineers — technical experts who hold the field's top certification — to test disaster-response technologies under real conditions rather than in laboratories.

The program has three tracks. The largest, a technology-linkage track, seeks to move already-developed core technologies from industry, universities and research institutes into field use over one-year projects, covering nine designated items where damage tends to be widespread: fires in eco-friendly vehicles, urban flooding driven by extreme weather, artificial-intelligence rapid-search mobility, bridge structural hazards and sinkholes among them. One item is new this year: the risk posed by the dismantling of aging structures, an issue that surfaced during the demolition of the Seosomun overpass.

The second track invites open proposals on any topic within five areas — natural disasters, industrial accident prevention, everyday safety, compound and special disasters, and future response — with two-year project terms. The ministry said it will weigh the difficulty of the research alongside a clearly defined user and the prospects for field testing.

The third track funds a one-year project to build an AI platform that pairs disaster-safety needs with available technologies, including development of a matching algorithm and database and a pilot test of whether the solutions it offers hold up.

Proposals will be accepted from Oct. 26 to Nov. 27. The ministry plans to notify winning projects by late January after document review and two rounds of evaluation.

"As this is a project led by the top engineers at industrial sites, who form one pillar of our science and technology talent, I hope the technologies developed will be put to use quickly at actual disaster and accident sites and contribute to public safety," a science ministry official involved in the program said.