Hiroshima city gov't creating multilingual app to help evacuate from unfamiliar places
HIROSHIMA -- In an attempt to make evacuation measures more helpful to people during a natural disaster, the city government here is progressing with the development of an instructional app under the working name "Hinanjo e GO!" which roughly translates to the "Go to the evacuation center!"
With an aim to convey accurate information about the area to people there during a disaster but not familiar with their surroundings, the app will provide users with the quickest route to an evacuation center from their current location. It is also set to include functionality to view live camera feeds of rivers, enabling people to confirm if the water level appears to be dangerous.
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It is expected that the program will automatically check for the closest established evacuation center to the user's current location, and then a single touch will bring up a route to it. If the person using the route then strays from it due to roads being unusable, it will reportedly be able to check again to display another path to the center. The app will also be usable in English, Mandarin and Korean and foreign tourists visiting will be encouraged to use it.
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Yoshihiro Kanagawa, the head of the city government's disaster prevention department, said, "We want this to be useful for people who can't get the relevant information from television and other sources when they're out of the house."