Our work, civil engineering, contributes to creating a human-friendly environment that supports civilized society.
As Japan’s leading bridge design consultants, we have dedicated ourselves to refining civil engineering techniques to improve people’s living standards worldwide. Our job is not only about construction; it ensures that bridges can be utilized for a century. To reach our goals, we have undertaken several efforts. One example is the JICA-Technical Cooperation Project “Improvement of Quality Management for Highway and Bridge Construction and Maintenance Projects in the Philippines,” conducted over three phases of three years, one year apart. Working together with local government engineers, we improved the capacity of maintenance management in the Philippines. We established a maintenance management cycle adapted to their needs through local roads and bridges’ essential maintenance and repair work.
Our approach is to apply Japan’s state-of-the-art technology and knowledge from our experience to the target country and refine it into civil engineering technology that will continue to evolve.
Another JICA-Technical Cooperation Project, “BRIDGE MAINTENANCE CAPACITY BUILDING Project in Zambia,” was undertaken in the Republic of Zambia from 2015 to 2017. The purpose of this project was to institutionalize the capacity of engineers and strengthen bridge maintenance planning and operational management, including outsourcing contracts. Practical courses were provided with local bridges in Zambia to teach routine bridge maintenance, inspection, and repair. Furthermore, we conducted counterpart training in Japan and other countries such as South Africa and the Philippines. We successfully nurtured independent bridge engineers through those training and improved the bridge maintenance capacity throughout Zambia.
Bridges support an essential role in the economic activities of the Republic of Zambia. The global spread of the COVID-19 in 2020 created some travel restrictions, which encountered an obstacle to continue to precede our project activities in Zambia. To continue to transfer our know-how of bridge inspection and repair, we have developed Metaverse, a VR technology, “home360room,” in December 2020. We continue educating bridge inspection and repair even during pandemic disasters using this technology.
home360room is Metaverse solution that allows participants to communicate in VR space from anywhere around the world simultaneously.
Participants select avatars of their choice to enter, and then the VR space becomes a conference seminar space or VR video world. By changing 360-degree photos or 360-degree videos, a host can easily share various locations (360-degree images) and the VR simulations or experiences (360-degree videos) within the VR space. It has a function to display a monitor screen inside the VR space so that the host can also present a slide show simultaneously. The participants’ voices come from where they stand, the avatars, so the communication becomes very immersive compared to the conventional communication tools. It uses minimum data transfer to be user-friendly to connect with a slow internet connection area, ideal for developing countries.
Because of the travel restriction, we captured similar Japanese bridges to the bridges in the Republic of Zambia (Chirundu Bridge: 3 Span PC Box Girder, Victoria Falls Bridge: Steel Arch Bridge) in the VR space. We used those examples to illustrate the inspection method and discuss the cause of the damage based on the characteristics of the Chirundu bridge. In this VR space, we communicate with Zambian engineers in immersive environments.
The home360room lets you see Japanese civil engineering close from abroad; you can experience social infrastructure supported by appropriate maintenance and management. We believe that home360room Metaverse can also contribute to various other projects.
Japan International Cooperation Agency（JICA）
・Capacity Building for Bridge Maintenance Project https://www.jica.go.jp/project/english/zambia/008/index.html
