Busan Metropolitan City Announces Plans for Full Operation of the Busan Big Data Innovation Center in 2023

Busan Metropolitan City has announced its operation plan for the Busan Big Data Innovation Center in 2023, aiming to turn Busan into a city that leads the digital economy. The center, which was opened in August 2022 in Haeundae-gu, Centum, will be fully equipped this year with various programs and expertise to support the revitalization of the region's data-related industries.

The center is run by Busan Techno Park and is equipped with innovative technology incubation spaces, training and meeting rooms, co-working spaces, and data analysis rooms. Its core functions include discovering and nurturing data specialists and innovative technologies, activating data use, and strengthening the self-sustainability of the data industry ecosystem through the establishment of geoscience cooperation.

To fulfill its core functions, the city has prepared 12 major projects in three strategies: fostering data specialists, establishing geoscience cooperation, and activating public and private data use. The city has budgeted 17 billion won for these projects.

One of the center's highlights in 2023 is the expansion of JUNCTION ASIA to become the largest technology hackathon in Asia. The city also plans to introduce Startup Weekend and DX Sprint, two programs aimed at fostering innovative technologies and startups. The center's DX Camp will provide intensive support to teams that stand out from Junction, Startup Weekend, and DX Sprint to help them commercialize their business models or apply them in the field.

In 2023, the center will also promote a project that allows ordinary citizens to directly participate in solving social problems based on data. This will be done through Code for Busan, a civic hacking program in which citizens take the initiative to develop public services to solve everyday problems.

The city will operate Data Week Busan, a permanent Data Industry Innovation Forum, and Meetup for small-scale workshops to attract top-level experts and speakers from around the world to Busan. A geoscience cooperation project is also planned to solve technical problems at business sites in cooperation with local universities and research institutes.

The center's Data Open Lab, which processes and converts unreleased data of Busan City and privately purchased data into standardized, refined, and high-quality data, will be expanded to serve as a hub and data storage for activating the use of public and private data. The Data Open Lab also provides technical advice and consulting to users and supports the export of public and private data in the form of statistical data after fusion and processing.

The Busan Big Data Innovation Center, which will be fully operational in 2023, is expected to provide support to small and medium-sized enterprises struggling to develop and commercialize new data-related revenue businesses, as well as developers and startups struggling to develop innovative technologies and services.