Two Japanese cities have adopted FIWARE to move their vision for a smarter city forward under the framework of the MIC* project, which highlights cross-segment utilization of data to deliver truly smart services. Takamatsu City highlights disaster management and tourism as their key issues. Meanwhile, Kakogawa City tackles issues of safety and security. It therefore makes perfect sense that they leveraged international standards and the open source implementation, FIWARE, to deliver the quality services in a cost-efficient and timely manner.

These initiatives shall move the Japanese cities to the next juncture on the way to truly Smart Cities. The FIWARE Foundation is moving full steam ahead to proudly support such initiatives.

The Mayor of Takamatsu, Hideto Onishi, says “We are happy to embark, for the first time in Japan, data utilization on FIWARE as a common platform. FIWARE is compliant with international standards and facilitates cross-domain interoperation of data.” In addition to their operational platform, a testbed will be available for Takamatsu regional innovators.

The Mayor of Kakogawa, Yasuhiro Okada, says “Kakogawa aims to be a parent-friendly city to raise their families. In our efforts to achieve that, we have adopted FIWARE to gather and analyse data in a variety of domains including safety and security. We will also structure collaboration with citizens, academic and private sectors so as to address our regional issues.”

These two cities are working together with NEC, which has been providing the FIWARE-based platform services.

* MIC: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications