2023. 10. 6

Japan Society of Civil Engineers
International Activities Center

IAC News No.132
Survey and Inspection of Airport Runway Surface
Using Driving Recorders Together with AI– From introduction at airport to rollout on roads –(1) Project Overview
With the working-age population decreasing, the maintaining of labor and technicalcapabilities is an issue shared with infrastructure maintenance. This issue is especiallystriking in regions with limited capital. Nanki-Shirahama Airport is actively
undertaking DX to run the airport in a manner that is safe, secure, and highly
productive, and to do this, it is verifying and adopting various new technologies.
The issue focused on in this report is its project to replace runway inspections, which
are done visually, with automated inspections done with the use of AI. More

Naotaka Ikeda(Nanki-Shirahama
Airport, Inc.)

specifically, Nanki-Shirahama Airport has installed commercial driving recorders(Photo 2) into its inspection vehicles (Photo 1), records footage of the runway surface
when inspecting by driving the inspection vehicle over the surface, and uses AI, which undergoes repeatedlearning from the images of the footage, to detect cracks and damage in the surface. Introducing this technology
will reduce the risk of overlooking damage that will impact the taking off and landing of airplanes, and will
enable efficient preventive maintenance by quantitively ascertaining the degree of damage escalation.

Photo 1 Airport Inspection Vehicle

Photo 2 Driving Recorder Installation(2) The Issue of Maintaining Airport Facilities
The entire runway surface (length 2,000 m, width 45 m) must be inspected at Nanki-Shirahama Airport within
a limited timeframe before starting airport operations. The number of personnel is insufficient, with one member1

of staff carrying out this inspection visually. Cracks and damage oversights will seriously interfere with safe
flight operations.
Furthermore, repairs made after the cracks and damage have become severe cost a great deal of time and moneycompared to the preventive maintenance of early detection and repairs. While there is a desire to select only
cracks that are minor and escalate quickly to repair these first, it is difficult to quantitively judge the degree ofescalation with a daily visual inspection. Therefore, an initiative is needed to carry out preventive maintenanceto detect minor damage quickly and to prioritize the repair of just damage that is escalates quickly.
(3) Introduction and Current Development Status
In April 2021, Nanki-Shirahama Airport began operation using this technology. While the detection precisiondiffers depending on the weather and the time of day, the technology can detect cracks of about 2 to 3 mm insize. Detecting finer cracks requires an improvement in the driving recorder camera specifications and anincrease in the number of pixels of the footage, which in turn leads to an increase in the running cost. However,lowering costs is a requirement for continuously maintaining regional airports, and so it was decided not to seek
greater precision.
Meanwhile, in order to carry out preventive maintenance, as stated earlier, it is necessary to quantitively
ascertain the degree to which cracks have escalated. That is why at present the aim is to build a system that
detects approximately 2 to 3 mm cracks and approximately 4 to 5 mm cracks as separate damage and gives analert (= the airport manager is notified) when minor damage escalates.
(4) Achieving Maintenance Efﬁciency and a Multifunctional Bus Service
At the same time, in March 2022, Nanki-Shirahama Airport began a trial to use this technology to survey andinspect the surfaces of general roads. It is a project where Nanki-Shirahama Airport installs driving recorders(Photo 4) in its shuttle buses (Photo 3), records footage of the status of the road surface when the bus is inoperation (driving on the road) to the driving recorder, and then uses AI to automatically detect cracks anddamage from the images.

Photo 3 Airport Shuttle Bus

Photo 4 Driving Recorder InstallationAlthough local buses are a necessary infrastructure for the movement of local citizens and tourists, many routes
are difficult to maintain with few passengers. The goal is to create new value from the operation of local busesby adding the new feature of road inspection to the main purpose of local buses, which is to transport passengers.

2This project seeks to achieve improved efficiency in maintaining road surfaces, which continue to deteriorate
over time, and the establishment of multiple functions in the running of local bus services.

【Report by Naotaka Ikeda, Head of Operation Unit, Nanki-Shirahama Airport, Inc. 】

The Efforts of the Nuclear Civil Engineering Committee
Post the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011
The environment surrounding nuclear power generation underwent significant
changes both in Japan and internationally following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear
Power Plant accident triggered by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, along withthe subsequent damage brought about by the Fukushima disaster. The JSCE’s Nuclear
Civil Engineering Committee is a committee that has conducted survey and research
efforts regarding civil engineering technologies relating to the use of nuclear power,
the location and construction of nuclear power plants, and the disposal of used fuelfor 66 years, should its history include the work of the Nuclear Civil Engineering
Technology Committee (1957), which was the committee’s previous incarnation. This
article highlights the current state of committee reforms 10 years on from theSusumu Nakamura(Chair of the Nuclear
Civil Engineering
Committee)

Fukushima disaster and the committee’s vision for future efforts.
Regulations and policies regarding the seismic design of nuclear power plants have been revised twice, once
after the Chuetsu-Oki Earthquake that hit Niigata Prefecture in 2007 and again following the Great East Japan
Earthquake of 2011.Similar to those before, the efforts of the Nuclear Civil Engineering Committee were tooversee the assessment of the earthquake resistance of important outdoor civil engineering structures, theassessment of the stability of foundations, ground, and surrounding slopes at the time of an earthquake, theassessment of tsunamis, including probabilistic methods, the advancing of technologies relating to assessing theactivity of fault lines, and the compiling of technical documents that contribute to the revision of standards inthe private sector. It is thought that these efforts produce useful technical information as a result of earthquake
resistance assessment technology based on the nonlinear finite element analysis of concrete structures, slopes,
foundations, and ground, fault line displacement simulation analysis technology using advanced numericalanalysis, probabilistic tsunami assessment technology, and technology to assess tsunamis caused by submarine
landslides. It is also believed that these efforts provide a useful role in improving the safety of the earthquake
resistance and tsunami resistance of important social infrastructure.
The goal of the Nuclear Civil Engineering Committee’s reforms is to make the efforts of the committee more3

impartial and transparent to society, and therefore work has been undertaken to review areas such as the member
structure of the committee, procedures for formulating technical documents, and how decisions are made. As aresult, it is expected that the technical documents created by the Nuclear Civil Engineering Committee will beof greater credibility to be used as standards in the private sector. Furthermore, the committee will advance its
efforts to also share the English versions of its technical documents, which are the result of its hard work. To
broadly make technologies relating to the safety of nuclear power public, the committee holds open lectures aswell as research discussion events, and based on the feedback it receives at these events, it has set up bodies
such as the Risk Communication Subcommittee, a working group relating to the overall safety assessments ofnuclear civil engineering structures at the time of an earthquake, and a working group relating to preventing
nuclear disasters, and also facilitates survey and research efforts in different fields than before. Additionally, asefforts opened up broadly to related academic societies as well, the Risk Communication Subcommittee works
together with the Atomic Energy Society of Japan as well as related committees within JSCE.
While the environment surrounding nuclear power is a tough one, the solving of the issues faced by civilengineering technologies connected to the safety of nuclear power is thought to be essential. We wish to continue
efforts trusted by society and advance the use of civil engineering technologies necessary for the safety ofnuclear power, including tackling the problems surrounding the safety of disposal sites, which require the takingof realistic action.
The Nuclear Civil Engineering Committee’s Website : https://committees.jsce.or.jp/ceofnp/【Report by Susumu Nakamura, Chair, the Nuclear Civil Engineering Committee】

Updates◆The International Infrastructure Archives– A Compilation of Japan’s Greatest Projects in Transfer of Civil Engineering Technology in Service –http://www.jsce.or.jp/e/archive/◆Infrastructure System Resilience: An Engineering Framework forAssessment, Management, and Governancehttps://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/9780784485088◆IAC “News Pick Up!!” on the JSCE Japanese website
https://committees.jsce.or.jp/kokusai/iac_dayori_2023◆Summary of featured articles in JSCE Magazine Vol. 108, No.10, October 2023
http://www.jsce-int.org/pub/magazine◆Journal of JSCE
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/journalofjsce◆Call for Papers: Advances in AI, Data Science and Digital Twin4

https://committees.jsce.or.jp/struct1002/node/36◆CECAR10：http://www.cecar10.org/◆ASCE 2023 CONVENTION, CHICAGO (October, 18-21)
https://convention.asce.org/◆KSCE 2023 CONVENTION, YEOSE (October, 18-20)
https://eng.ksce.or.kr/activities/act01.asp?idx=60&page=1&sfield=&gtxt=&byy=&gbns=1&ctop=MN03
35&htop=MN0323&ptop=MN0323&smm=&btype=&bgbn=R§ IAC News Subscription §The IAC News is one of the communication tools to share information and ideas with the members. We would like to invite
you, your friends and colleagues to join the communication and to subscribe the IAC News. Please register online:(http://www.jsce-int.org/node/150). We look forward to meeting you.
§ IAC Facebook §Recent activity of International Activities Center is introduced on this Facebook. Please see this home page(https://www.facebook.com/JSCE.en).
Comments and Questions
Please send us your feedback and comments to help us improve the IAC news. We look forward to hearing from you.
JSCE IAC: iac-news@ jsce.or.jp

5