Japan firms look to AI to bolster disaster prevention and mitigation
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Last November, the prefecture's Rikuzentakata city became the first in Japan to launch a system that automatically calls registered residents simultaneously to monitor their evacuation status in the event of a disaster.
Utilizing AI, the system relays evacuation instructions to those who have registered their telephone numbers in advance, and then asks questions such as "Are you evacuating?" When residents respond verbally with their location and whether or not they are injured, the AI system then converts the response into text, which is then sent to the city's emergency operations center.
The system came about because city, where a total of 1,807 people died or went missing in the 2011 disaster, had identified as a challenge the relaying of timely information to vulnerable segments of the population, such as the elderly, as well as residents who might not be able to hear the community disaster broadcasts or those who don’t have access to social media.
Yoshio Nakamura, 51, head of the city's disaster prevention division, expressed hope that the system would be widely used to quickly contact people in need of assistance, though he acknowledged the possibility of telephones services being down during an actual disaster.
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