Kurashiki City

Intelligent ICT Implementation
Project in the Takahashi River
Basin
Background and Reason for the Project
The main source of employment of Kurashiki
City is manufacturing from leading
manufacturers in industrial and textile
industries in Japan. On the other hand, a study
by Regional Economy (and) Society Analysing
System (RESAS) found that the specialisation
coefficient (the rate when that of Japan wasset as 1.0) of the number of employees in theinformation services business in the city is0.13, which shows the employment level inthis area, where future growth is expected, issignificantly low and the city therefore needs
to put more effort into nurturing anddeveloping ICT industry business.

eye” (https://takahashi-riv.dataeye.jp/) isan open data catalogue site related to sevencities and three towns including Kurashiki
City in the Takahashi River basin, andpublishes visual content of analysed
regional features.
 People-flow analysis by IoTThis analyses images taken by the cameras
installed in several spots in the Bikan
Historical Quarter, a notable tourist spot ofKurashiki City, and collects coordinatedinformation and attribute information(gender and age) to figures on the screens
as data. It is designed to collect only suchdata but not the images themselves to avoid
retaining personal information.
The acquired data is visualised as People
Flow, which is published as a content of“data eye” called People-Flow Now inKurashiki Bikan Historical Quarter.

Project Aims
The city aims to engage in a project to develop
and create human resources and businesses
who can lead data utilisation in the region andvitalise the region by promoting datautilisation through collaboration between thepublic and private sectors.

It also estimates and shows in a graph future
visitor traffic by computing regression
analysis of combined past accumulated data
and weather data.

Project Outline
This is a complex project consisting of variouselements including open data engagement,
IoT project, implementation of AI-related
projects, events and seminars utilisingregional data, and human resource
development in the data utilisation area.
 Takahashi River Basin Data Portal Site
Takahashi River Basin Data Portal Site “dataPeople-Flow Now in Kurashiki Bikan Historical
Quarter1 AI application(1) Takahashi River Tabi Concier (travelconcierge) Tabit
Tabit is a voice-response AI application
developed as a smartphone app anddesigned to provide local tourism andculture-related recommendations.
(2) FAQ Chatbot “Coton”
This is an AI chatbot that auto-responds
to queries from citizens on general
government services, based on FAQ
information released by Kurashiki City.

at suburb or street number level or at a level
called 500 meter-mesh.

Takahashi River Mirai (future) Map Although there are a number of otheradvanced case examples in other individual
projects themed on IoT and AI, this project isa comprehensive project that covers allmeasures on data utilisation. In particular, it
can be said that the project engages in thedevelopment of human resources who caneffectively use community-wide data,considering human resource development in
anticipation of future industrial growth.

FAQ Chatbot “Coton”
 Human resource development-related
The city runs an e-learning platform, data
eye Web Lesson, which allows citizens totake online lessons on data utilisation
techniques, to nurture citizen data scientists.
The city has also held a lot of events topromote effective use of data and regional
data and seminars to promote teleworking
and entrepreneurship.

Results of the Project The project nurtured 46 citizen data
scientists over five years, who havemastered the basics of statistics at a level
capable of conducting basic practical data
analysis.
 Effective use of data and know-how
accumulated through this project has helped
generate the following data utilisation
projects other than city projects.
(1) Victim support project in response to
the heavy rainfall disaster in July 2018
based on effective use of data
(2) Data marketing using combined data
held by private businesses and storesand public entities

Features and Innovations
 The visual contents published by data eye ischaracterised by the granularity required forcommunity-based analysis. For example,
while analysis by RESAS offered by thenational government provides analysis onlyat the municipal level, data eye’s Takahashi
River Mirai (future) Map can provide analysis2(3) Classes in local high schools for datautilisation to solve regional issues

Bikan Historical Quarter helps understand thevisitor traffic and attributes in Bikan Historical
Quarter, while analysis of free-Wi-Fi accessallows us to see how people travel around thearea. Utilising such data will help develop
measures to promote tourism and improveand maintain the beautiful landscape for city
development.
For the next step of the Data-driven City
Development, the city is considering the“Smart Park & Ride” project for thedevelopment of a safe and secure urban
environment around Kurashiki Station, andmitigating traffic congestion caused bytourists by forecasting and capturing real-timedata of both people and vehicle traffic andcongestion using AI and IoT technologies
based on the people-flow analysis technology.
The city will aim to work hard in the hope ofmaking this plan a reality.

Issues, Problems and Responses
 When the project initially started, an issue
arose regarding the large amount of manhours required for primary work such as data
cleansing, which resulted in a shortage ofhuman resources for the primary duty,advanced data analysis. To solve the issue,
the city has established a work system basedon tele-working, which broadened the baseof human resource development andallowed students and women who had left
their work to raise their children or to takecare of a sick relative, to obtain jobs andengage in data processing activities which
can be performed with basic skills.
 The people-flow analysis using IoT has
received a favourable response from various
sectors. However, the current system, which
processes big data collected through IoT inreal time, is costly and therefore it is hardly
implemented by other entities. Therefore,
the city is currently considering theimplementation of a low-cost people-flow
analysis system by replacing thecomponents with lower-priced ones, orreplacing the system with a simplified modelthat focuses on data collection rather thandata analysis.

Reference URL
Takahashi River Basin Data Portal Site “dataeye”
https://takahashi-riv.dataeye.jp/Contact
Division in charge: Information Policy Section
Phone: ＋81-86-426-3211
E-mail: inftch@city.kurashiki.okayama.jp
Terminologies and Coined Terms UsedIntelligent ICTIntelligent ICT is a term described in the reportof Study Group concerning the Vision of theFuture Society Brought by Accelerated
Advancement of Intelligence in ICT by theMinistryofInternalAffairsandCommunications in 2015. New significantchanges occurring in human society brought
by advanced technologies including computer

Future Developments (expected effects andproject vision and issues)“Collect data and take actions based on itsanalysis.” This is called data-driven, thefundamental idea of this project.
For example, the analysis of the statistic
information based on mobile network
revealed that more women visit Kurashiki City
than men. Also, People-Flow Now in Kurashiki3and communication network called ICT(information and communication technology),
artificial intelligence and various data run andare used on such systems and interfaces
between such technologies and human beings
are referred to as Advancement of Intelligencein ICT. Also, technologies and systems that
demonstrate such abilities are overall referred
to as Intelligent ICT.

demographics and people flow. It is designed
for local governments, including municipal
governments, to understand the current
status and issues of their region based on
objective data.
Citizen Data Scientists
Citizen Data Scientists is a concept provided by
Gartner in 2016, defined as “a person who
creates or generates models that leverage
predictive or prescriptive analytics, but whose
primary job function is outside of the field ofstatistics and analytics”. Gartner describesthat citizen data scientists can bridge the gap
between general business users who attempt
data analysis and dedicated data scientists
with advanced skills.

Regional Economy (and) Society Analyzing
System (RESAS)
RESAS is a system run by the Headquarters for
Overcoming Population Decline and Vitalising
Local Economy in Japan of the Cabinet Officeto aggregate and visualise so-called public andprivate big data on industrial structure,4