Developing Earthquake Damage Detection and Information Sharing Tools for Road Administrators

After a large scale earthquake, evaluation of damage of road facilities such as bridge has great importance to assure the emergency route for rescue and transport of urgent supplies. Current damage detection is basically conducted by means of visual inspection, but generally it takes so long time to collect whole damage information in the affected area. This paper shows that an advanced IT technology and traditional technology can be utilized to improve quickness and efficiency of damage detection and information sharing, and introduce some researches and implementations

Contribution of Community Culture for Regional Development : Through Cases of Isolated Group Islands in Yaeyama, Japan

In the recent decades, more and more researches have explored that there is a strongly positive correlation between economic growth and characteristics of regional community and that entrepreneurship is the engine of regional economic growth. However, in many rural and peripheral regions, geographical disadvantages make it very difficult to develop community and grow entrepreneurship for regional development. In this study, we observed and examined the region of Yaeyama Islands in Japan and many firms in this region and found that community culture is one of the positive factors for the development in this region. The intrinsic spirit of shared vision and joint mission based on nature loving, heritage respecting and future concerning have great impacts on propelling community evolution and entrepreneurial activities. This paper focuses on how community culture contributes to community development and entrepreneurship growing for the development in Yaeyama islands. The successful experience may have some implications for other rural and peripheral regions

A Basic study on geological risk reduction in Japan public works

In recent years, as the finance of the national and local governments becomes severe in Japan. The government construction investment has been decreasing, and now it is reduced by 48.9 percent from its peak. People’s cost consciousness is also rising due to cut in the construction investment. The public works project in Japan is under severe conditions due to the budgetary cutback. Responding to this situational change, the government has started implementing the cost structural reform of public works” used for the whole government in 2003. This reform describes reconsideration of all processes of the public works project from cost viewpoints. However, “the viewpoints from the geological feature” are not specifically described. Geological conditions influence effectiveness and/or efficiency at any stage of life cycles of public works, conception, design, construction, and maintenance. In this study, thus, setting "reduction of the geological risk in public works" as the ultimate goal, an attempt is made to study a possibility of lowering the geological risk by introducing geological engineering advisor and concept of GBR (Geotechnical Baseline Report), developed and applied in a large-scaled underground construction project in the U.S. Here, geological risk is defined as a possibility of cost increase and/or project delay caused by poor or insufficient treatment of geological conditions. It is observed that the public client and the contractor have her/his own worry about payment associated with design document change: “Paying too much” and “Paid enough?,” respectively. It is concluded that introduction of geological engineering advisor is expected to reduce the public client’s worry and that concept of GBR is expected to reduce the contractor’s worry

Study on Development of the Pile Penetration Test System Based on Press-In Construction Data

In the Press-in Method, the piling technology, the piling machine jacks a pile into the ground by a static force using the reaction force derived from the previously installed piles. This technique allows the piles to be installed with less noise and vibration, and in addition saves the room required for the piling work, with the small hydraulic piling machinery and its construction system using no temporary works. Since this piling method enables the piles to be installed without excessively disturbing the soil around the pile, it is possible to obtain information about the ground conditions through monitoring the jacking force during installation and extraction. This feature of the Press-in Method suggests the possibility of utilizing the piles as a tool for grasping the ground conditions. Accordingly, the concept of PPT, Pile Penetration Test, is induced, and this paper introduces the PPT system by providing a clear explanation of it and arranging the present situation and awaiting solutions to develop the system. The PPT system is composed of four aspects; press-in construction site, PPT as a decision making tool for piling conditions, PPT as a tool for quality control of piles, and PPT as a subsurface investigation technique. Among these four aspects, ‘press-in construction site’ is essential to this system, for it functions in the system as the source of the PPT data. The other three aspects are all related to the interpretation of the obtained PPT data, and are expected to be of practical use both in construction sites and in geotechnical academic fields. These four aspects of the PPT system suggests as many research phases, which are discussed in detail in this paper. The system is eventually expected to enhance the benefits of construction works and contribute to producing more validity and accountability of the construction project, on the ground of its advantage of obtaining, supplementing and renovating the subsurface information in every press-in construction site all over the world