The 3rd Kounose IoT Workshop was held

On August 27, 2022, we held a workshop with members of the Kounose district fire brigade.

We have held the first and second workshops so far, and we decided to speak to the Kounose district fire brigade, which helped local residents evacuate during the heavy rains of July 2020, and will continue to work during heavy rains in the future.

Since we usually meet at Oiwa Shoten, the workshop was held outdoors in the evening. Professor Furuta from Taisho University and Researcher Sato from Prefectural University of Kumamoto participated online.

Looking back on the heavy rains of July 2020

The workshop began by looking back on the heavy rains of July 2020 and asking participants what the situation was like.

"The sky that day was a red, or rather an orange, color I'd never seen before."

"Everything around the house was flooded, so we thought about what to do and managed to evacuate 45 people using a children's wading pool."

"The last rescue was around 9 o'clock."

"At the time, there was no television reception and no signal, so we couldn't communicate with each other."

Each person looked back on that day and dug up their memories of the time of the disaster.

Camera installation

We also asked members of the fire brigade about installing cameras.

"I saw the fixed camera and contacted them to say that the water had come up to the railing of the bridge, and they said, 'I'll go and have a look.' So because there was a camera, we were able to check the footage and that helped with the evacuation."

"We are checking the camera footage from afar to see what the situation is like on the ground."

"There are people who don't use smartphones and still use analog phones, so it would be nice if they could access the site via LINE or the website."

We received a lot of feedback, and while some of it was useful, we also received feedback such as "it's too dark to see at night," which made us realize that there is still room for improvement.

We installed the ATOMcam app on the fire brigade members' smartphones and confirmed that we will continue to work together in the future.