Market Overview

In recent years, Japan has experienced devastating earthquakes, typhoons, and rainstorms. In addition to these natural disasters, the country is also on alert for the Nankai megathrust earthquake and the Tokyo near-field earthquake, both of which could bring about tremendous destruction. While the number of municipal personnel is decreasing, the number of people requiring consideration, care, and support in emergencies is increasing. These people include the elderly, people with disabilities, infants, pregnant women, parturient women, and foreigners. Due to these social changes, it is imperative to enhance disaster prevention systems and implement disaster prevention DX solutions.

In this research, disaster prevention digital solutions are defined as software and applications that digitally collect, integrate, and analyze disaster-related data. These solutions then provide users with the appropriate information and behavioral guidance at the right time. Specifically, they include comprehensive disaster prevention systems, disaster information management systems, safety check systems, disaster information services, disaster forecasting tools, victim support systems, and disaster prevention geographic information systems (GIS). These solutions are pivotal among disaster prevention DX solutions.

Based on business sales, the market for disaster prevention digital solutions (*) is estimated at 18.4 billion yen. Traditionally, disaster prevention investments have focused primarily on the hardware aspect, such as infrastructure restoration and storage of food and daily necessities. However, due to the increasingly apparent risks of climate change, such as floods and higher temperatures, efforts are underway to implement systems that visualize risks during normal times and immediately alert people in case of emergencies. These efforts are increasing investments in information systems and software. The disaster prevention digital solutions market is expected to reach 18.69 billion yen in 2025, a 1.6% increase from the previous year. The market is expected to gradually rise.

*) The market size includes spending by municipalities and private companies, but not from the nationwide budget.

Noteworthy Topics

"Phase Free" Becomes a Key to Disaster Prevention DX

Phase Free is attracting a lot of attention as a new approach for digitally transforming disaster prevention, which is also known as the disaster prevention DX initiative.
Since Phase Free is a disaster preparedness solution that seamlessly links normal and emergency phases, including urgent, measure-taking, and restoring states. Therefore, disaster prevention solution providers have started designing solutions and services with features that can be used during normal times, enabling users to leverage the same system during emergencies. This development is backed by the fact that disaster prevention solutions have difficulty fundraising if they are regarded as mere emergency tools.

Additionally, since disaster prevention solutions are rarely used under normal conditions, validating their return on investment (ROI) is challenging. This often delays or deters municipalities and private companies from deploying these solutions. To address this issue, more users have started incorporating disaster prevention solutions into their normal operations by aligning them with everyday tasks, such as storage management, disaster-preventive training assembly, infrastructure inspections, and administrative residential services.
As a result, municipal personnel can confidently use the UI displays and operations in emergencies, since they are familiar with them. It is more important to familiarize users with these solutions during normal times so that they will not hesitate in emergencies than to simply make the solutions available during both normal and emergency times. This practical approach to usage leads to continuous usage and further investment.

Future Outlook

In the future, disaster prevention DX initiative will evolve based on three interactive factors, i.e., policy trends, technological innovation, and increased private investment.
Nationwide initiatives, such as revising basic national resilience plans and preparing to launch the Disaster Prevention Agency will likely escalate the entire disaster prevention systems and boost demand for disaster prevention solutions.
Technologically, empowering operational technologies, such as AI, IoT, digital twins, and drones, as well as implementing wide-range, minute information processing that leverages data alignment platforms, is expected to enhance the ability to provide comprehensive services that can cope with multiple types of disasters. 
Public-private partnerships and industrial-academic-government collaborations will accelerate the development of a disaster prevention DX ecosystem. New market entries from different industries will expand disaster prevention DX applications. While these innovations may not lead to rapid, short-term growth, they could lead to stable, long-term growth from both structural and technological standpoints.  

Research Outline