Urban infrastructure in Seoul integrated with smart sensors to monitor and control pest populations through predictive modeling.
SEOUL · May 12, 2026 : Paris has more rats than people, and the struggle to manage them has become a defining issue for the city’s next mayoral election. While the French capital has long relied on its DansMaRue app to let citizens report sightings, Seoul’s urban planners are looking at the problem through a different lens. The argument from the South Korean capital is simple: you cannot trap what you have not accurately mapped.
Systemic Intelligence vs. Citizen Reports
Paris’s current methodology is reactive, relying on residents to spot a rat before the city intervenes. In contrast, Seoul’s data-first approach utilizes a network of IoT sensors and AI to monitor factors that predict infestations before they become visible. By correlating burrow concentrations with the age of sewer infrastructure and the density of food waste from local businesses, Seoul creates a proactive data architecture. This allows for the identification of "high-risk" zones where rats are likely to thrive, rather than where they simply happen to be seen by the public.
Surgical Targeting Over Mass Poisoning
One of the most pressing issues in Paris is the rise of poison-resistant rats, with nearly half the population now immune to traditional anticoagulants. Seoul circumvents this "arms race" by using its data map to conduct targeted interventions. By focusing on environmental drivers: such as leaking pipes or poor waste disposal patterns: the city reduces the carrying capacity of the urban environment. This precision avoids the ecological and health risks of area-wide poisoning while delivering more sustainable results through system-level changes.
A Global Use Case for Innovation
As Paris prepares for a global hackathon to solve its rodent crisis, the Seoul model stands as a proof of concept for "smart" pest management. The transition from manual rat-catching to real-time, predictive modeling represents a shift in how cities view sanitation. For Paris, the solution may not be better traps or faster reporting, but the underlying data architecture that allows a city to understand its pests before they reach the surface.
Source: The Star / Blue News / Big Think / City Journal / CNN
