In April 2022, Kitami Institute of Technology merged its academic corporation with two universities, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine and Otaru University of Commerce, to establish the Hokkaido Higher Education and Research System. We interviewed Hiroshi Masui, of the Information Processing Center, about the purpose of the integration, collaborations between education and research, and the aims and results of the Zekkei Project: a data-driven tourism project using SINET. (Interview date: October 18, 2023)

Tell us about the Open Innovation Center (ACE), which you are working on through the integration of the three universities.

Masui:The Hokkaido Higher Education and Research System was established in April 2022 by the corporate merger of three universities: Otaru University of Commerce, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, and Kitami Institute of Technology. Through this integration, we aim to contribute to the local community and create innovation by improving management efficiency, strengthening cooperation between education and research, and improving the quality of education and research for students. The ACE (Agriculture, Commerce, and Engineering) Open Innovation Center is a collaborative research promotion center between the three universities. Its role is to promote future-oriented open innovation, and its aim is to achieve “social implementation of knowledge” through interdisciplinary research geared toward a knowledge-intensive society, by integrating, managing, utilizing, and disseminating research information. In our construction of a system for aggregating and disseminating research seeds, we used SINET and GakuNin RDM. ACE’s representative initiative is the Zekkei Project, focusing on data-driven tourism, with the aim of promoting tourism through data analysis and use.

What kind of activities does data-driven tourism involve? Also, what kind of activities are included in the Zekkei Project?

Masui:The Zekkei Project is formed by three universities: Otaru University of Commerce, Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, and Kitami Institute of Technology, with Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine as the project representative. The project is driven by four teams (the Management Team, the Research Team, the DIAS Collaboration Team, and the Tourism Frontier Team) and related educational and research institutions, local governments, and private companies.
For example, we are working to link science and business by conducting observation, analysis, marketing, and distribution of information in an integrated manner, with the aim of predicting the occurrence of unique natural phenomena in the Okhotsk region and the spectacular scenery (zekkei) derived from them, and utilizing them for data-driven tourism. Data-driven tourism is an initiative that aims to contribute to local communities and promote tourism by linking weather observation and data analysis to tourism. Hokkaido, especially the Okhotsk region, has a unique climate with natural phenomena peculiar to cold regions. For example, mirages and drift ices are phenomena that cannot be seen in Honshu (the main island of Japan). Meteorological data on these phenomena are stored in the Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS) at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) via SINET. The Zekkei Project is engaged in activities to stimulate tourism demand by displaying forecasts of mirages and drift ices through data analysis.

How do you collect weather information specifically?

Masui:The Shiretoko Peninsula, which is a World Natural Heritage Site, has not been developed with infrastructure such as optical cables, and there is no cellular phone service around the tip, making it a blank area for meteorological observation. In response to this issue, we developed a communications-type weather monitoring system through a combination of Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network technology (a wireless communication standard that enables power-saving and long-distance communication over a distance of 20km) and Mobile SINET. Associate Professor Kazutaka Tateyama (Research Fields in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Kitami Institute of Technology) is involved as a representative of the project. Unmanned weather stations (7) and cameras (17) installed on Shiretoko Cape and three peaks of the Shiretoko mountain range, as well as thermometers on the mountain range and Mount Io (Shiretoko-Iozan), transmit data to the parent unit by LPWA communication at a frequency of once every hour. From there, it is sent to SINET via Mobile SINET, and related data is collected as DIAS data. This enables measurement of data such as atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind direction, and wind speed.

So, the SINET network environment plays an important role in data collection?

Masui: SINET’s network environment is useful not only for meteorological observations on the Shiretoko Peninsula, but also for academic collaboration and regional collaboration among the three universities. Due to distance issues, the line speed between Kitami Institute of Technology and Kitami Data Center—which was originally 10Gbps—has been improved to 200Gbps in SINET6, making data communication between the three universities easier. In addition to this kind of academic collaboration, we have also unified the authentication system into GakuNin. By linking with GakuNin RDM and external storage, it has now become possible to provide researchers and other users with collected and analyzed data. In this way, we have created an environment that enables efficient data collection and analysis, based around a research data management infrastructure with a common data management server and GakuNin RDM shared by each university.

Tell us about any challenges and future prospects.

Masui:In acquiring data on the Shiretoko Peninsula, it is necessary to work in harsh natural environments—specifically cold climatic conditions such as strong winds, snow and ice, as well as animal damage caused by bears, deer, and wild rats. In addition, propeller-type anemometers do not last for even one year due to the strong winds, and there are problems related to installation—such as the destruction of the support pillars of observation instruments due to the increase in weight and air resistance due to snow and ice buildup, and the loss of sensors. On the other hand, we have found that the communication method (using LPWA and cellular phone networks) and the self-sufficiency of power supplies using solar panels are also suitable for monitoring road and river infrastructure in environments like Hokkaido, where there are many uninhabited areas. The weather stations and cameras developed in this project are actually being introduced to local and national government administrators in the field of disaster prevention.
To achieve data-driven tourism, we have signed cooperation agreements with several local governments and private companies, and the installation of DIAS cameras at various scenic locations is progressing. Additionally, to improve the accuracy of forecasts, we use AI to automatically identify occurrences of spectacular scenery from camera images and analyze the relationships between frequency of occurrence and weather conditions, contributing to the development and promotion of the more accurate event prediction algorithm: Zekkei Explorer.

It is also important to review tourism resources from an objective perspective. If you live in Hokkaido like we do, sightseeing spots and activities such as snow and skiing seem like part of daily life. To capture inbound demand from people in areas such as China and Southeast Asia, who are attracted to Hokkaido, it is necessary to engage in marketing from the perspective of foreign tourists. As a model project for interdisciplinary collaborative research at the three universities, the Zekkei Project will continue working to develop a system that actively guides tourists and a business model that sustainably revitalizes the region, with a research team system that integrates minds from both the humanities and sciences. At the same time, to develop and manage tourist destinations in a more sustainable manner, rather than in a brief, transient manner, we would like to continue our monitoring activities to reduce environmental changes and impact on tourist destinations.
Additionally, although observation data is easy to share as open data, there are still challenges in sharing data that contains personal and confidential information. Security and protection of intellectual property are important issues in data sharing for industry-academia collaboration. For example, if data that is being used in individual joint research with a private company becomes available to other companies, it will be a problem, so I feel that it is necessary to formulate policies on data use and other data policies.
Connecting to SINET has enables us to achieve a stable and high-speed network environment. Going forward, we would like to continue strengthening our research infrastructure while deepening the level of our collaborations.

Thank you.