Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism will establish an information platform for the sewerage sector in fiscal 2014 that enables both public and private sectors to share information on trend of technical development. The platform will offer information by internet and seminars and the system of third party evaluation assessment for sewer technologies. This will be a good opportunity for ICT companies promoting their infrastructure business.

The ministry will facilitate introduction of ICT by municipalities and the water and sewer industry to improve efficiency of sewer sector. A new governmental guideline, temporarily named “Japan New Vision of Sewerage 2100,” which will be decided in summer 2014, will include promotion of effective facility maintenance with ICT as a main policy.

The wide-area monitoring system proved to save the annual maintenance cost about 5 % in two municipalities where ICT was already introduced. (2013/11/06)