Japan aimed to realize the idea of ”balanced development of the nation.” To achieve this, the Metropolitan Expressway, Meishin Expressway, and Tokaido Shinkansen were built, which supported Japan’s high economic growth. All of these infrastructures are now over 50 years old. There are also many cases that the deterioration of facilities progresses significantly after 50 years. In Japan as a whole, 63% of road bridges and 62% of river management facilities will be over 50 years old by 2033. Social infrastructure, which contributes greatly to economic development and improving the quality of life, will cause social problems when the deterioration becomes apparent. Even just looking at road bridges, there are over 700,000 aging infrastructures, and they must be inspected.
A hint on how to continue using existing infrastructure can be found in petrochemical plants in Japan. There are more than 100 major petrochemical plants in Japan. Many of these were built during the period of high economic growth. The deterioration of these facilities is progressing rapidly. Old plants are prone to declining productivity due to repairs and malfunctions. However, rather than building new facilities, the mainstream is the realism of how to continue using existing infrastructure. There is a growing movement to utilize advanced technologies such as IoT for the maintenance and management of these aging plants. Technology has already been established to collect temperature and vibration data from sensors installed in plants and digitize inspection records. Extending the time of continuous operation of plants and improving productivity will directly lead to profits.
In the absence of money and people, there is also a need for ingenuity to maintain infrastructure. In such a situation, there is a tool that can be a savior. 5G is in the spotlight. However, convenient and high-speed 5G requires daily charging. Meanwhile, a communication technology called Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) is also quietly attracting attention. This LPWA is valued for its ability to cover a wide area with low power. Its characteristic is low speed, but its advantage is its energy-saving nature, which allows it to last for several years to decades with a general battery. There are 700,000 bridges in Japan that need inspection and repair. If we can understand this priority, it will be easier to assign inspection personnel. We can embed sensors in the bridge to measure deterioration. By using LPWA to send data once a week or once a month to a construction office several tens of kilometers away, we can create a system that can determine the priority order.
