Satoru NAKAJO Project Associate Professor 2012-
Estimation and Distribution of Road Update Information
Road related information is used by car navigation systems and in a variety of other fields. However, it is surprisingly difficult to determine where road changes have occurred. As a result, apart from the information on certain roads provided by road administrators or the like, the current trend worldwide is for individual companies to make after-the-fact determinations by means of driving surveying or using probe data, etc.
For this reason, I am working to develop and demonstrate methods of gathering and analyzing various types of publicly available information (for example, prospects for road work contracting by local governments, construction work tendering invitations, engineer performance reports relating to public projects, etc.) and then predicting in advance the times and locations at which road renewals will occur and disseminating this information.
Establishment of Representations of Spatial Topology
In route planning and determinations regarding whether it is possible to travel between two points, etc., depending on how the information is to be used, it might be necessary in some situations to express spatial representations in topological rather than geographical terms. Whereas there is already a well-established method (latitude and longitude) that is used for spatial representation in geographical terms, no universal method has yet been established for spatial representation in topographical terms.
For this reason, I am currently conducting research with the goal to establish methods for the expression of spatial representations in topological terms, one that can be used widely for roads, indoors, means of transport, etc. For the road sector in particular, I am currently working to develop and demonstrate a "Road Section Identification Data set (RSIDs)" that can be used to assign universal IDs to road sections.
Use of Spatial Information in the ITS Field
Among the areas in which I am conducting research are the creation, updating and use of highly accurate maps using road construction drawings, the use of spatial information in ITS applications to enhance driving safety and reduce environmental load, the development of highly accurate positioning technologies and location referencing systems, and the development of map data structures for use in the Local Dynamic Maps (LDM) and multimodal services. I have also been involved as an expert of ISO/TC204/WG3 (ITS database technologies) and as the convenor of SWG 3.3 (location referencing).