City of Kakogawa. FIWARE4Cities book ed. 5
In this weekly series, we present to you each time one innovative city on its digital journey and on its way to become smart(er). This time, we have the City of Kakogawa for you.
Kakogawa is a city located in Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, with roughly 266,500 inhabitants (as of 2016), and well known for its cultural and culinary heritage.
The city is part of the Western Japanese railway system and therefore well- connected to other important cities like Osaka and Kobe.
The city faces high crime rates, which determines the Smart City Strategy of the city’s government. The strategy tries to deter terrorism and crime while protecting the citizens, making the city more enjoyable and thereby increasing its attractiveness also for tourists. The second part of the strategy aims to respond to the increase in disasters associated with climate change.
Recommended by LinkedIn
The city tackles these challenges with detection, prediction and advanced analytics of Big Data collected by sensors throughout the whole city. The analyzed and anonymous data is used to identify potential dangerous and disaster situations and inform citizens through push-type notifications when it comes to warnings or evacuations.
Crime Monitoring Platform
In 2018 the city government made an attempt to reduce crime rates in the district of Hyogo. Kakogawa city’s municipal government, in cooperation with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications and private businesses, including NEC among others, installed a smart networked camera and sensor system to allow residents to help keep the neighborhood safe, whilst protecting their data and privacy.
Popularly known as the Mimamori system, it consisted of about 1,500 networked cameras - mainly around schools and school routes and 2,000 sensors. The system is able to detect residents carrying Bluetooth Low Energy tags to confirm their location. The city used FIWARE open source components to power some of its Smart City projects and protect their data. In the further development of Kakogawa’s Smart City the city introduced a FIWARE-based platform that accumulates data from various sectors and publicizes them as Open Data in an aim to improve convenience and comfort for citizens; create a safe and secure city through public-private sector collaboration; activate the economy; create new businesses; and improve the transparency and reliability of the local government.