A special mobile navigation app for pedestrians that navigates through the shadiest areas of the city is gaining popularity in South Korea due to record heat waves, The Korea Herald reported.
The app in question is Geuneullo, whose name can be translated as “In the shade“. It takes into account the position of the sun at the time of the user's request and calculates how the shadows of buildings and trees will fall at that moment. The program also tells you the percentage of the route that will be in the shade.
The app's website states that it can recommend which side of the bus to sit on to avoid direct sunlight. The same applies to subway cars.
The app was launched on July 18 and is currently only available in the Apple App Store. The Android version is in the process of being finalized. According to the newspaper, Geuneullo topped the free map store rankings, beating Google Maps, Kakao Map and Naver Map.
The app was developed by a 23-year-old student at Seoul National University who is studying mathematics education and minoring in business management. In an interview, he said that the idea for the app came to him while “struggling on the way to school in the heat.”
The development used data from an open-source mapping platform, as well as building and tree information from government resources. On August 2, the thermometer in Yangsan, southeastern South Korea, reached 42.5 degrees Celsius, setting a record high since 1904.