Debris flow by embankment, accident of frequent child...Unknown fight to protect life: Dawn of Gaia

On October 1st (Friday), "Gaia no Dawn" (every Friday at 10:00 p.m.) will be closely related to local governments, research institutes, and venture companies that are working on new "town development." We followed people who struggled to regain the collapsed safety myth and the unknown scene.

"Devil's 7 years old" where casualties occur one after another

In June of this year, a 7-year-old and an 8-year-old were killed when a drunk driving truck crashed into a line of elementary school students on their way home from school in Yachimata, Chiba. Yachimata City has a unique traffic situation that frequently causes traffic jams on National Route 409 with one lane on each side, and there is no end to the number of cars that use narrow side streets as bypasses. Residents said some cars were driving through at considerable speeds. The government urgently subsidized the budget and installed a guard pipe on the road where the accident occurred. In addition, other measures were taken, such as lowering the speed limit, narrowing the road so that only one vehicle could pass through it, and creating steps. In Yachimata City, about 150 dangerous places were found in addition to the accident site, and school buses have been introduced in some elementary schools until a solution is in sight.

On the other hand, at Kanazawa University in Kanazawa, Ishikawa, an experiment was being conducted in which a cap with a device attached was put on a child to record the field of vision while walking. Kanazawa University associate professor Makoto Fujio, who is leading the group, said, "[Children] only look at the direction they want to go, and they don't pay attention to the side where the opposite car is coming." Sound the alarm about the narrow vision of children who do not check the surrounding dangers and go to the target. Looking at the data on the number of pedestrian casualties by age (2020), while there are many elderly people, "7 years old" stands out. This is because when children become elementary school students, they leave the hands of their parents and act alone. From the driver's point of view, children are small and difficult to see. This is called the "devil's seven years old" and poses a big challenge. Mr. Hidetoshi Kitamura of "Kokumin Kyosai coop" visits Mr. Fujiu's laboratory. Kokumin Kyosai coop, which also handles insurance products, has started working with Mr. Fujiu on a project to reduce accidents involving children. In mid-September, Mr. Fujiu installed "a certain thing" on the school route of the elementary school attached to Kanazawa University. At two intersections located about 300 meters from the school, digital signs that react to small wireless communication devices "beacons" are placed. The idea is to see how first-graders with "beacons" react on the way to school and see how effective they are. A total of 30 first-year students with radios. When children approach while commuting to school, the sign alerts them with moving illustrations and sounds. Many children stopped in front of the sign and checked the safety of their surroundings. Mr. Fujiu, who saw the situation, smiled and said, "It's good." Fujiu wants to install these digital signs in dangerous places on school routes nationwide.

The reality of sloppy embankment that leads to disasters

July 3rd. The landslide disaster that hit Shizuoka's Atami City became a catastrophe with 26 dead and 1 missing (*as of the end of September). The cause is the embankment. Collapse of an illegal embankment built over a residential area triggered a debris flow that crushed 128 homes. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, there are more than 50,000 embankments nationwide. Tako Town in Chiba, which is close to Narita Airport, is one of them, and there are more than 13 large embankments scattered throughout the town. In 2018, in order to protect the quality of important local products such as Takomizu and Takomai, Tako Town strengthened the regulation of embankment by ordinance. All mounds of 500 square meters or more are managed by the town, and the standards for notification by business operators have been tightened. One of the causes of Atami's debris flow is thought to be the "drainage" of the embankment. Hideki Shiina, chief of the environmental affairs section of the Tako town hall's living environment division, said, ``We have to check the wastewater even more strictly.'' However, despite the tightening of regulations, an embankment in the town collapsed in June of this year, causing an accident in which people were injured. Coincidentally, about a month before the Atami debris flow occurred. A collapse occurred during the construction work of the embankment, and the sediment that flowed out blocked the prefectural road. What happened at the site of the collapsed embankment... Interviewing them reveals the reality of the sloppy embankment.

Effective use of industrial waste

Yaotsu Town, Gifu. At the construction site of the Chubu Jukan Expressway, the people in charge of the construction site were troubled with the disposal of the surplus soil from the tunnel construction. The surplus soil was intended to be used for the foundation of the road, but it has a higher water content than expected, and there is a possibility that it will collapse due to heavy rain. If you step on it, the soil will go up and down. A man drove up there. He is Shomei Takenaka, president of the venture company HSS. After excavating the soil, Mr. Takenaka analyzed the ingredients at his own factory in Gifu prefecture. Based on the data, we create an improvement material that hardens the soil. The name of the powdered improvement material is "Doctor", a soil solidification material. Mr. Takenaka explains the origin of the name, "Doctor who removes poisons. I want to be a doctor of the soil." It is said that when this solidification material is mixed with soil, it becomes up to 50 times harder. After graduating from high school, Mr. Takenaka got a job at a local construction company, Dai Nippon Construction. While facing the problem of surplus soil in tunnel construction, etc., he began researching its own disposal method. It is said that the raw materials for "Doctor" are environment-friendly materials that reuse industrial waste from factories, such as papermaking raw materials, gypsum board ash, and limestone. Mr. Takenaka says, "We have been researching solidification materials to see if we can reuse sludge, industrial waste, and soil." Today, "Doctor" is used at various civil engineering sites from Hokkaido to Okinawa, and last year's annual sales were about 800 million yen. The program covers several sites where solidification materials are used. Will it really help solve the "filling problem"?

Protecting children with the power of digital

There are still areas that have great concerns about the safety of children. In Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, which has an arterial road and heavy traffic, traffic rules were frequently broken at an intersection about 200m away from the municipal elementary school. The intersection is a school zone and should be closed from 7:30 to 9:00 in the morning, but many drivers ignore the rules. It is said that some cars intentionally move away from the barricades that have been set up to enter the loopholes. Fusami Kuwabara, the president of the elementary school's PTA, said, "There are a lot of cars coming at us with a lot of momentum. It's the toughest place in the school area." Furthermore, there are no traffic restrictions during school hours. I need an adult to watch over me, but due to the effects of the corona virus, the elderly people who have been watching over me until now are no longer able to come out. There is a limit to watching over by guardians alone. Then the PTA turned to Fumikazu Yama, the president of the IT venture "otta" headquartered in Fukuoka. Mr. Yamamoto visualizes children's behavior and develops a terminal "otta" equipped with a monitoring function. In Fukuoka City, operation began in 2015, and now 100,000 people are using it in 16 cities nationwide. Mr. Yamamoto, who was a semiconductor robot engineer, started his current company specializing in watching over children after a kidnapping incident occurred in the town where he lived at the time. "I started with the thought that I don't want my daughter to be in that kind of situation," she said. "otta" is a system in which a child holds a whistle-shaped terminal with a built-in transmitter, and the person watching over the child can confirm the position with a smartphone. When you pass a preset checkpoint, such as near the entrance of a school, it will be recorded on your smartphone. Base stations installed here and there catch transmitters approaching within a radius of about 20m, and the positional information is transmitted to the guardian, so that the child can immediately know where the child is. The program also revealed an "amazing effort" that linked taxis and base stations nationwide. Person who wants to see this broadcast to "TV Tokyo BIZ"!