Korea's 7.3 million buildings mapped in national energy database

South Korea has built a national integrated data network that lets users view the energy consumption and heating and cooling efficiency of all 7.3 million buildings across the country at a glance.

The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology announced Thursday that it has developed DataNet, an integrated data system linking energy usage records for 7.3 million buildings nationwide with building-related administrative information scattered across multiple government agencies.

A research team led by Kim Deok-woo, a senior researcher at the institute's Building Energy Research Division, identified 17 types of administrative data using the national building registry as a reference. These include energy consumption, weather, commercial district and business information, business licensing records, spatial data, and information on apartment complexes, education, medical and cultural facilities. Of those, 13 data types have been fully integrated, achieving an average matching rate of 94.8%. Medical institution data recorded a matching rate of 98.4%, while commercial business data came in at 96.7%.

The key innovation is technology that standardizes address information — previously managed differently by each agency — and accurately links it to individual buildings.

In South Korea, lot-based addresses and road-name addresses are used interchangeably, and multiple buildings often share a single lot, making accurate data integration difficult through simple address comparison alone.

To address this, the research team applied a three-step address matching technique. It also introduced technology to identify outliers in energy consumption data and redistribute billing periods into calendar-based monthly units, improving overall data accuracy.

The system breaks down monthly energy usage into heating, cooling and baseline consumption, enabling analysis of each building's distinct energy consumption profile.

The team also developed indicators that account for building shape and the shadowing effects of surrounding structures. Applied alongside external temperature and energy usage analysis, these indicators can reveal each building's sensitivity to heating and cooling demands as well as its operational characteristics.

The research team has also developed DeepView, a web-based visualization system that displays these analytical results on a map, and is currently running it on a trial basis.

DataNet draws on building-level information rather than personal data, and sensitive information — including data on nationally important facilities — was excluded from the collection process from the outset.

The project involves more than 130 researchers from 16 institutions across the country. The team plans to complete the integration of the remaining data types by the end of this year and to further refine energy performance assessment technology for different building categories.

Park Seon-gyu, president of the institute, said the project had "laid the groundwork for analyzing the energy performance of buildings nationwide by connecting scattered building data into a single system," adding that the institute would "actively apply it to improving building energy efficiency and supporting carbon neutrality policy."

The findings were published Thursday in the international academic journal Energy & Buildings.