Description:
The goal of the "Safety Tips" app by the Japan Tourism Agency is to create an atmosphere in which visitors may travel about Japan with more confidence. The App can be used in English, Japanese, Hangul, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Vietnamese, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Indonesian, Tagalog, Nepali, Khmer, Burmese, and Mongolian. It includes an evacuation flowchart that explains what evacuation behaviours are necessary for the given situations, a communication card that can be used to receive information from Japanese people, and valuable links that provide information in times of catastrophes such as emergency shelters. With push notifications, the app can alert its users to weather warnings, earthquake warnings, tsunami warnings, and more.
The developers of the "Safety Tips" app also made the API (Application Programming Interface) available to other developers, so that tourists can receive important warnings and alerts through various channels and apps. As an example, the app “Japan Official Travel App” from the Japan National Tourism Agency was developed to make traveling in Japan safe and easy for foreigners. The app provides travel guide content, route search and navigation, and basic information like rules, medical assistance, embassy contact details, instructions to emergency shelters, and communication cards with important words for individuals who do not speak Japanese. All this information is provided by the distribution service of the "Safety Tips API".
The solution could help to address the following needs of first responders and authorities:
Communicate with or alert citizens
Improve preparedness level among citizens