Fujitsu Leverages AI Tech in Joint Project to Contribute to Safe Tsunami Evacuation in Kawasaki - Fujitsu Global

The International Research Institute of Disaster Science at Tohoku University, Earthquake Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, the City of Kawasaki, and Fujitsu Limited have today announced that they will conduct a field trial of AI technology for supporting tsunami evacuations in Kawasaki City on Sunday, November 17th. The four parties have been promoting their Joint Project Aiming for Tsunami Disaster Risk Reduction Using ICT in the Kawasaki Coastal Area since November 2017. The upcoming demonstration will be conducted as a continuation of this project, which most recently included a tsunami evacuation drill conducted with residents of Kawasaki in December 2018. In the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, overconfidence in existing safety protocols and disaster countermeasures, in combination with insufficient communication of disaster information, partly contributed to substantial delays in evacuation. In some cases, this tragically meant that some residents did not realize that a tsunami would strike their location until it was too late, leaving them unprepared to evacuate.