April, 2019

For the annual emergency day drill in Kumamoto, Japan Urban Risk Lab in partnership with messaging app LINE, and the city of Kumamoto piloted a novel approach of using chatbot system to manage evacuation shelters during emergency events. Specially developed for Japanese cities, the Shelter Operation Chat-bot helps shelter managers communicate with the emergency control room directly. Through its guided interface, it collects pertinent data and also updates a map interface to show the latest status of the shelter on the Emergency Management Dashboard. The dashboard is designed to reduce the information overload during a crisis, allowing disaster managers to communicate with shelter operators directly, check the latest vital stats and manage resources.

Additionally, RiskMap platform was used to test the public reporting functions to share flood and road closure information, with over 13,500 people participating in the drill across the city.