Efforts for social implementation of disaster mitigation system using probe motorcycles

It is difficult to accurately predict when and where natural disasters such as major earthquakes will occur, and it is difficult to establish and permanently maintain a large-scale disaster response system for the entire country in order to realize a sustainable, safe, and secure society. Therefore, the key point is how to quickly and efficiently collect on-site information and establish evacuation, rescue, and support systems in the affected areas when a disaster occurs.

The authors launched a research project in April 2012, following the IATSS earthquake disaster investigation project in 2011, immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake, to investigate the use of probe information obtained from vehicle-mounted sensors to assess the on-site situation in the initial response to such disasters. In the project, a prototype of a system that uses a probe function mounted on a motorcycle to assess road surface damage and detect the presence or absence of people in need of rescue while driving was built and its performance was checked, and the effectiveness of the proposed system was found. After the completion of the research project, the author has spent about 10 years trying to improve the accuracy of the system's detection of minute road surface wear and tear, which can be used for road management, as well as to verify the social acceptability of the system through long-term experiments in social implementation.

In this paper, the author summarizes the research trends to date, reviews the progress and results, and reports the results of discussions on the role of vehicles equipped with the probe function for the implementation and diffusion of sustainable disaster mitigation and disaster prevention systems in the future.