Yusuke Aoyama
IPv6Style
A workshop entitled "Deployment and Application of Sensor Networks", hosted by the Live E! Council, was held at the University of Tokyo on July 27th and 28th. In this workshop, a wide variety of reports were given, not only on the Live E! Project, but also on business and research activities dealing with sensor networks. This article will introduce examples of efforts by the local governments of Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture, and Minato City, Tokyo.
Taking aggressive disaster prevention measures using environmental sensors – Efforts by Kurashiki City, Okayama Prefecture
Ms. Kaori Ito (Treasurer of Kurashiki City and Deputy Director of Disaster Management Headquarters) gave a talk entitled "Efforts by Kurashiki City ~Aiming to Become a City Resistant against Disasters: Use of Sensor Networks for Disaster Prevention" introducing Kurashiki City's efforts towards disaster management using IPv6 and sensor networks.
Kurashiki City had heavy damage when Typhoon Nos.16 and 18 hit the city back to back in 2004. With the lessons learned from that experience, they recognized the importance of disaster management, and with goals and costs in mind, they decided to adopt an IP-based setup.
What Kurashiki City learned about disaster management, she said, were first, that it is important to collect accurate information quickly, and second, that it is also important to provide timely information.
In the past, in order to collect information, city employees went to the disaster sites and investigated, e.g. observing Tsunami occurrences, checking the size and state of landslides, etc.
However, there were issues with this method of collecting information; employees themselves were at risk and the city would get information on the disaster site only indirectly. So, they installed IP cameras at places where they thought disasters could happen so that they can observe the disaster sites directly from the Disaster Management Headquarters.
In Kurashiki City, they installed a fiber optic network called "Kawasemi Net" in fiscal year 2002, so they were able to build the observation system, which uses IP cameras, at a low cost.
As for providing information, they made it so that they can promptly alert residents to evacuate by connecting the speakers installed in elementary and middle schools in the city with the Disaster Management Headquarters using Kawasemi Net.
As for their future efforts, they plan to install Digital Instrument Shelters throughout the city by coordinating with the Live E! Project in order to build a detailed weather data collection system.
By collecting the weather data from each area in real time via the network, their goal is to provide aggressive disaster prevention, e.g. prepare for disasters in advance by predicting when disasters will occur.
Taking action against the heat island effect and the move away from science – Efforts by Minato City, Tokyo
Mr. Yasutomo Yamamoto (Director of Land Usage Department, Minato City, Tokyo) gave a talk introducing Minato City's measures towards conserving energy by using sensor networks.
According to Mr. Yamamoto, there are two major issues when advancing measures towards energy conservation. One is the heat island issue and the other is building management costs.
In some parts of Tokyo, a rise in temperature due to the heat island effect has been a serious problem. However, the cause of this is still not clearly understood.
Although people say that the flow of wind is a major factor in the heat island effect, there isn't any actual data for that theory. So, the city aims to get to the bottom of the relationship between the heat island effect and wind by installing wind gauges on a mid-level floor, a higher-level floor and the rooftop of high-rise buildings within Minato City with the cooperation of companies. However, since they haven't actually been able to get much cooperation, they haven't moved forward with their plans.
From the viewpoint of energy conservation, building management is getting people's attention because by increasing the efficiency of energy consumption, large buildings can make major gains in energy conservation and cost reduction.
Currently, public facilities not only in Tokyo, but also nationwide, are getting old; in 5-6 years, about 50% of the buildings owned by the Tokyo government will be over 30 years old, and a significant number of buildings will require renovations or repairs.
In addition, according to data gathered by the Tokyo government, among the facilities owned by the Tokyo government, 26 facilities, which is about 10% of total facilities, consume about 70% of the energy consumed by all public facilities owned by the Tokyo government. Moreover, the top 100 energy-consuming facilities (about 50% of all public facilities) consume about 90% of the total energy consumed by all public facilities.
This means that by just increasing the efficiency of energy consumption in some of the facilities, the city can achieve significant gains in energy conservation. Furthermore, by making facility management IP and web-based, more efficient management can be achieved.
Also, Minato City has been working together with the Live E! Project to install Digital Instrument Shelters in the city. They are used not only for heat island effect research but also for elementary school education.
They aim to prevent the move away from science in young ages; they want children to experience the joys of science as well as to learn how to think scientifically, by connecting phenomena in their everyday life with weather data collected by Digital Instrument Shelters.
In order to achieve this goal, they plan to install Digital Instrument Shelters (they currently have four installed within the city) at all 27 locations where traditional instrument shelters are installed.
* Live E! Workshop "Deployment and Application of Sensor Networks"
http://live-e.naist.jp/sns/
