LOCATION:INTELLIGENCE
USING GPS DATA AND AI TOTACKLE POVERTY AND DISASTERS
As people in developing nations increasingly flock to live in urban areas, theinformal settlements in those cities have also expanded, resulting in a proliferationof the number of residents who live not only in poverty but also alongside the perilsof natural disasters and infectious disease. A Japanese university startup is
endeavoring to change that reality through the utilization of innovative, AI-based
location-analysis technology.
In recent years, the world’s
population
hasbecomeincreasingly concentrated inurban areas, as they are the main
centers of economic activity.
United Nations (UN) statistics
indicate that these areas occupy
approximately only 3% of the total
land area globally yet produce
more than 80% of the world’s total
GDP. Meanwhile, more and morecity dwellers in Asia and Africa
are living in poor conditions,with insufficient access to public

Members of the LocationMind team who aredeveloping the PIVE (Poverty Impact andVulnerability Evaluation) tool in the Philippines,
including SHIBASAKI Mariko (center) andMIYAZAWA Satoshi (second from the right).

services and education linked tothe cycle of poverty. It is difficult
to assess where and how thesepeople live when their number
increases in a chaotic fashion, andthat in turn constitutes a great
barrier to the adoption of measures
by governments and NPOs for
improving their welfare.
A Japanese startup, LocationMindInc., has taken an innovative
approach to solving thatproblem by utilizing cutting-edge
technologies to analyze and predict

human movement, or “peopleflow.” “People flow data” arecreated by collecting and analyzing
location data from smartphones
and other devices and visualizingthem in an easy-to-understandform. Such data are useful not
only for businesses, but also for thetackling of a wide range of social
problems, from traffic congestion
to disaster control.
LocationMind was establishedin 2019 by researchers of alaboratory team headed byProfessor SHIBASAKI Ryosuke,a renowned authority in this field,
who was at the time a professor at
the Center for Spatial Information
Sciences of the University ofTokyo. Among other initiatives, thecompany is presently undertaking
a joint research project in themetropolitan area of Manila, thecapital of the Philippines, together
with the Asian Development
Bank, to develop what they callthe “PIVE (Poverty Impact andVulnerability Evaluation) tool.”This tool analyzes GPS data,
satellite images, census data, andother data by using proprietary AI
technology to capture and visualize
the state of people living
in poverty—which had
heretofore not been sowell understood. The
subjects range fromthese people’s generalliving conditions totheir access to healthcare
and education, as wellas the disaster risks
to which they areexposed.
Since Metro Manila
was developed on low-lying plains along several river
estuaries, it frequently suffers
water damage owing to typhoons
and other disasters. The analysis ofdata from past flood damage andsubsequent changes in the flowof people has made it possible topinpoint high-risk areas and predictthe movement of people andtraffic when disasters strike. “Byproviding this information speedily
and in an easily accessible form,
we aim to support policymakers
and NPOs in their decisionmaking,” said SHIBASAKI
Mariko, a consultant working on
the development of PIVE.
How to combine and analyzediverse types of data can be a trialand-error affair, but the company

In such fast-growing cities as Indonesia’s capital ofJakarta (photo), public transport plays a key role inrelieving traffic congestion and rectifying transport
inequalities. In order to establish an efficient public
transport system, it is important to assess residents’locations and their transportation needs at various
times of the day. While supporting the developmentof railways in ASEAN countries, Japan has also
cooperated in research and analysis to promote
development in line with potential needs. AP/AFLO

has built up substantial experiencein addressing manifold socialproblems. During the COVID-19
pandemic, for example, thefirm contributed greatly togovernmental decision-making inJapanthroughhigh-quality
analyses that predicted infection
risks by examining the flow ofpeople in the unprecedented
situations that arose—such as
the nationwide restriction on
unnecessary movement—which issignificantly different from that innormal times.
Another instance of suchanalyses can be found in Indonesia,
where a project has been organized
to develop a model visualizing
residents’ locations and theirtransportation needs at various
times of the day for the purposeof improving public transport in
the Jakarta metropolitan area.
The project has succeeded inachieving a highly precise systemof analysis and prediction—more
economically and quickly thanconventional means—by applying
a distinctive method of utilizing
already available GPS data andprevious traffic surveys. “Evenin situations in which others
might give up, experience has
convinced us that there must be asolution, so we continue setting up
alternate hypotheses and moving
on to the next analysis,” explained

Top: An impoverished settlement in MetroManila that was selected as the test site for thePIVE tool project. People-flow analysis not
onlyassesses
thedistribution
andconcentration of people in such areas, but also
helps to better understand their movement intimes of disaster, their access to education, andother aspects of how they live.
Bottom: A PIVE map of an area adjacent toMetro Manila that visualizes how people living
in poverty tend to settle in places vulnerable toflooding and other disasters. The darker thered, the greater the area occupied by newbuildings, including illegal settlements.
OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS | UP NOAH | PLANET LABS PBC,NORWAY’S INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE AND FORESTS INITIATIVESATELLITE DATA PROGRAMMIYAZAWA
Satoshi,whodeveloped the model, and also
serves as a member of the PIVE
development team.
The team is currently working
on a PIVE prototype that will
be further refined by input frompolicymakers and others. “We aim
to eventually build a commercial
product that can be used in othernations,” Shibasaki said. The UN
predicts that the world’s cities willcontinue to balloon in population,
increasing by an additional 2.5
billion people by the year 2050.
If that is to be our future, thenPIVE will contribute greatly torealizing the promise of the SDGs
(Sustainable Development Goals)
agenda, which is to “Leave No One
Behind.” 