September 24, 2001, Vol.12, No.12 ISSN 1346-5317

The dynamic development of IT (information technology) on a global scale together with the rapid diffusion of the Internet and rapidly evolving communications technologies is nothing short of a social revolution on a par with the Agricultural Revolution or the Industrial Revolution. Japan is facing issues that include environmental concerns, the rapid aging of society, falling birthrates, urban redevelopment, etc. in the midst of this age of vigorous transformation. The positive introduction and diffusion of IT is an essential element toward finding a solution to all these challenges for the country. In other words, promotion of IT-oriented restructuring of industries is the only way for the Japanese industry to be recovered and maintain sustainable economic growth in the future. It is necessary to focus all our attention on promotion of IT. Based on such understanding, the Government has developed an "e-Japan Strategy" as manifestation of Japan's policy target of becoming the most advanced IT nation in the world over the next five years, together with its action plans, "e-Japan Priority Policy Programs" and "FY2002 Programs." Specific objectives have been identified and an outline of the measures that need to be promoted, especially with respect to budgetary support priorities. 

On September 3, 2001, Mr. Pramod Mahajan, Minister of Information Technology and Minister of Communications paid a courtesy visit to Rep. Kenji Kosaka, Senior Vice-Minister for Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.

Minister Mahajan visited Japan to participate in the Japan-India IT Summit held in Japan, etc. During the courtesy visit, Senior Vice-Minister Kosaka explained the "e-Japan Strategy" and MPHPT's major IT policies. In response to the explanation, Minister Mahajan stated that i) India has become a powerful center of IT human resources, ii) the country will develop software and export thereof to Japan, iii) India will dispatch IT professionals to Japan and iv) both countries shall strengthen cooperative ties.

In addition, in commemorating the 50the anniversary in April 2002 of establishment of Japan-India diplomatic relationship, Minister Mahajan proposed that both countries would issue commemorative stamps (the Indian Ministry of Communications is in charge of postal administration).

Note: Japan-India IT Summit: Meeting between Mr. Heizo Takenaka, Minister of State (Economic and Fiscal Policy, Internet Fair 2001 Japan, IT Policy) and Minister Mahajan. This IT Summit is one of the "Japan-India IT Promotion and Cooperation Initiative" agreed upon in August 2000 between former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee during Prime Minister Mori's visit to India.
 
 

Communications Research Laboratory (CRL), an independent administrative institution, developed a large-scale IAA (an abbreviated form for I Am Alive) system, which gathers and accumulates a large-volume of victims' information in disaster-stricken areas and provides an information retrieval service over the Internet. This system is more invulnerable in terms of communications traffic congestion than fixed telephone and cellular phone, namely, a disaster-resistant system. CRL carried out experimental operations of the large-scale IAA system from September 1 through 7, 2001, in order to verify the system performance in cases where large-scale disasters strike metropolitan areas and a sudden rise in traffic volume is foreseen.

The former IAA system, which is developed by the Emergency Communications Group of CRL and the WIDE lifeline Working Group, would not process this kind of huge traffic. In comparison with the former IAA system, the large-scale IAA system with extremely high performance can rapidly process enormous amount of traffic even if a large-scale disaster strikes the Tokyo metropolitan area where there is a large population.

This new system was opened to the general public as a verification experiment. Users accessed to the system as "victims of disaster" who register their information and/or as "retrievers" who search for information on "victims of disaster" via the Internet. During this experiment, the Internet Disaster Support Drill, huge traffic was loaded on the system to verify whether the system can process a large-volume of traffic within a short period of time. The heavy-load experiment was conducted twice on September 3, 2001.

CRL is planning to carry out the open heavy-load verification experiment to verify that the IAA system can cope with large-scale disasters in densely populated areas.
 
 

Fig. IAA system