Innovation often comes at a price, and this was never more true in Japan where a rash of natural disasters over the last decade gave birth to all sorts of life-saving refinements in methods and services using information and communication technology.

The list is impressive.

For example, a map showing unblocked roads was released online in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster that left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing.

And after a typhoon lashed the Kii Peninsula in western Japan in fall 2011, killing or leaving dozens of residents unaccounted for, an easier-to-use water gauge that takes advantage of the Internet of Things (IoT) solution made its appearance.

ONLINE MAP OF PASSABLE ROADS

At 10:30 a.m. on March 12, 2011, less than 24 hours after the Great East Japan Earthquake stuck northeastern Japan and unleashed towering tsunami, the website of Honda Motor Co. started displaying a map of roads still accessible to automobiles and other vehicles.

Routes that cars actually took in devastated areas of the northeastern Tohoku region showed up in blue on the Web page.

While road networks were severed in many areas, streets still in use turned blue like capillary vessels in the human body, drawing more than 1.3 million views over the four days after the map’s introduction.

How was it possible to pitch such a map so soon after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake hit? It emerged that Honda made use of the Internavi interactive car navigation system to trace and show where vehicles equipped with the technology had traveled.

The map data was also provided to Google and Yahoo, among other search engines. It was done so quickly that online users were unable to mask their surprise. One Twitter post expressed astonishment that “such an advanced system could be incorporated in so short a time.”

Five years prior to the disaster, Honda teamed up with Takeyasu Suzuki, chairman of the Agency for Promoting Disaster Mitigation and Damage Reduction, to figure out how Internavi technology could be put to better use in times of disaster.

As a researcher of information handling in emergencies, Suzuki, 64, was grounded in the belief that “data on roads represents the most important lifeline information.”

His rationale was that deliveries of relief goods and reconstruction materials, along with personnel from the Self-Defense Forces and private volunteers from around the nation, depend on traffic networks leading to disaster zones to get the work done.

To that end, Suzuki was convinced that information about roads still passable was more helpful than knowing every thoroughfare, including those rendered unavailable.

He started by inputting into Google Maps Honda’s records of unblocked roads collected when the Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake struck in 2004, leaving 68 people dead.

At the time of the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-oki Earthquake, which killed 15 individuals, Suzuki received traffic data from Honda a day after the temblor, which allowed for a road map to be uploaded to the internet in PDF style within three days. The site recorded 500 to 900 views daily.

Suzuki continuously sent information by email to the Kashiwazaki city government office in a heavily affected region in Niigata Prefecture, because it was inundated with inquiries from truck drivers on possible routes to bring in aid supplies.

The scope of the accessible road map was further expanded with dramatically improved accuracy after the 3/11 earthquake hit.

After Toyota Motor Corp. started a similar service a week after the disaster, ITS Japan, a nonprofit organization comprised of automakers and other entities, combined data from Honda, Pioneer Corp. and Toyota with that gathered by Nissan Motor Co. to display more details on traffic conditions around Kamaishi and Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture.

After floods were triggered by powerful Typhoon No. 12 in September 2011, truck manufacturers joined the program to offer their own data. Now that seven corporations are involved, mapping data is updated every hour, compared with the previous frequency of once a day, in the case of an emergency.

Although staff members at ITS Japan took the trouble of sending a request for information submission to each company and sorting out provided road data by hand at times after the 2011 quake and flooding, almost all the procedures are now automatized.

The mapping system proved its worth after torrential rains lashed the Kyushu region and areas in western Japan as well as an earthquake off Fukushima Prefecture this past February.

“The coverage area was extended based on the lessons learned from the 2011 disaster, realizing a virtual real-time mechanism to offer information,” said Masanori Hayashi, 61, a managing director of ITS Japan, looking back on the past improvements.

WATER GAUGE AND FLOOD RISK

When Typhoon No. 12 triggered massive flooding in the Kii Peninsula in 2011, the risk of inundation from local rivers could not be gauged properly.

As a water level meter was not in operation in the upper reaches of the flooded Nachigawa river, residents remained unaware of the danger in Nachi-Katsuura, Wakayama Prefecture, resulting in 29 deaths.

Water gauges that meet government standards cost more than 10 million yen ($91,730) apiece. Even simpler versions are priced at hundreds of thousands of yen, meaning the devices are never installed on a whim.

This led Hiroaki Akiyama, a professor of space engineering at Wakayama University’s Center for Disaster Science and Resilience Collaborative Development, to develop an inexpensive IoT-based water indicator.

Akiyama, 51, who was part of the team that launched the Hayabusa space probe program, decided to make use of the LoRaWAN radio communications format, intended for satellite communications and other objectives, to cover more areas while conserving power at the same time.

He began his research and development at Nachi-Katsuura and Totsukawa in Nara Prefecture, after especially serious damage was reported in the municipalities.

The finished IoT water gauge is 20 centimeters tall, 10 cm wide and 5 cm long. Water levels are measured by ultrasonic waves, allowing residents to check the figures via the Line free messaging app on their smartphones.

The unit, equipped with a solar cell, costs around 100,000 yen or less to install and continues working for six months even on dry cell batteries alone.

It was also introduced in Gobo and Wakayama in Wakayama Prefecture, from 2019. A federation of residents’ associations in Wakayama ensured the water level meter ran at five locations along the Wadagawa river and irrigation canals.

“It (the gauge) is of help for zones troubled by possible inland flooding ,” said Naoto Tanaka, 53, a member of the federation.

Shigeru Miyawaki, 81, chairman of the federation, said he expects the equipment to lead to the “faster evacuation of residents.”