Interview:
Background this site enabled to launch only six hours after the earthquake What "SAVE JAPAN! PROJECT" will be.

Text: ENDO Yoshihiro

Soon after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, professional Web creators voluntarily started building Web sites or offering services to help the victims of the disaster, since the only medium they had to hand was their own working place, that is, the virtual world. They poured in their ideas, skills, and efforts without rest, as a way of showing that those suffering in the aftermath of the earthquake would know that they had millions of supporters. Among such projects is the "SAVE JAPAN! PROJECT," which has become one of the most well known of the services aimed at helping the victims. We interviewed MURAKAMI Kaie, the key figure behind the project, to ask him about the “hows and whys” of the project and its future.

SAVE JAPAN! PROJECT

To provide online support to the victims of the earthquake, MURAKAMI played a key role in establishing this service. The service went online only six hours after the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011. The portal site provides summaries of a wide range of information, such as the damage status of a particular location, or about the well-being of particular people. By using the hash tag "#save_ + name of a prefecture, a regional name)", the information provided by people on the ground is sorted and published according to the area. The system supports ten languages, and a mobile version is also offered.

(MURAKAMI KAIE, a representative ofSIMONE INC., a leading fashion branding agency in Tokyo)

Each employee was urged to "Do something for the disaster victims"

When the earthquake occurred, MURAKAMI was at the SIMONE head office in Tokyo. He was born and raised in a town on the Shizuoka coast, which has always been assumed to be where the next major earthquake would occur, some time within the next few decades. Since his childhood, therefore, MURAKAMI had been drilled on how to deal with a major earthquake, so as soon as the earthquake hit, he felt sure that there would be a tsunami and major damage as a result. But as he saw the number of postings appearing on Twitter begin to explode, MURAKAMI knew that the situation was actually much more serious than he had ever expected. After making sure that his employees, their families, and relatives were all safe, he felt that he had to do something for the people in the disaster area.

"For about one hour after the earthquake, all of us here in the office just felt so empty and helpless. But as the reports of the damage began to come in, we began thinking about what we could do for the people up there," said MURAKAMI.

He built a team with two volunteers, and started to plan a new Web service for the survivors. MURAKAMI knew very well that first 72 hours after a disaster are crucial to the rescue of any survivors. So, he set three goals; "going live with the service as soon as possible," “offering useful information to the victims," and "using a plain universal design that anybody could understand.” MURAKAMI and six employees then started to build the Web service with the assistance of CUBIT., Inc.

Preference given to "Speed" over "Sophistication"

MURAKAMI decided to use Twitter as his main source of information. The tweets contained huge amounts of information about the earthquake, so they felt that if they could organize and offer that information in a form that anybody could understand easily, then they could offer a valuable source of information to the victims, thought MURAKAMI. He then created the design of the Web site, which uses a Twitter hash tag. Also, one of the employees set up an account on both Twitter and Facebook. They decided to host the site on the company's server with the SIMONE domain name, since they weren’t able to acquire a new server at the time.

"We didn't have enough time to build a prefect service. Rather, we thought it was much more important to launch one quickly, even if it might have some issues. Given the possibility of major damage to the communications infrastructure in the stricken areas, we thought it best to create a lightweight service. Ultimately, the site went live only six hours after the earthquake struck."

Improve information accuracy by sorting it manually

Before going live, MURAKAMI announced the launch of the service on his Twitter account. News of this spread rapidly, such that, when the service was actually started, the load caused the server to crash. So their next challenge was to find a server with greater capacity. MURAKAMI used Twitter to ask for support and advice, and was rewarded with innumerable responses. More than 200 companies offered their support, including Japan's leading IPPs. "Even people we had never seen before offered their support via Twitter. We couldn't reply to all of them so I would like to take this chance to offer my thanks to them."

After restoring the service by using a server provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), MURAKAMI and the staff went on to broadcast the existence and usage of the service by using a hash tag. By spreading more than 100 example tweets, MURAKAMI announced that everybody could have information stored according to their area by using the hash tag. Rules-based information was gathered and the staff then sorted it manually prior to it being offered as a useful resource for the victims.

Towards continuous service

MURAKAMI and his staff updated and improved their service every few hours based on the information and requests received from users. For example, they launched a mobile version of the service only a couple of days after the earthquake. Their project is now moving on to its next stage; becoming an ongoing service to help reconstruct and rehabilitate the quake-hit areas.

MURAKAMI contracted with Cond? Nast to become a Media Partner and has started to call for wide-ranging assistance from overseas. "Thinking of the scale of the damage, I think we are going to need five, ten, or even more years for reconstruction. So, our project shouldn't be transient. SIMONE is not a company that excels in building system architecture, so we’re not well positioned to attain these results. In Japan, there are many excellent Web production companies and world famous Web creators. We hope our project becomes a springboard for providing other support to the people who are suffering."
Now, MURAKAMI is looking for the best charity to support the reconstruction. He is fully committed to further action. The challenges of the "SAVE JAPAN! PROJECT" will continue until all the victims of the disaster regain their normal lives.

For inquiries or information, please contact savejapan311[at]gmail[dot]com.

This article is a re-composition of the above page of "Special Feature: The Great East Japan Earthquake and the Web" at the May 2011 issue for Web.