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Phase noise of PLLs is one of the critical issues in high-performance transceivers. Especially, in-band noise is troublesome because the phase noise inside a loop bandwidth is hard to be filtered out due to low-pass characteristic of most PLL components. The in-band noise of PLLs is mainly caused by charge-pumps (CPs), so that large-size transistors are used to improve in-band noise of CPs. Due to this trade-off between inband noise and occupied area, a large area is needed for CPs in high-performance transceivers. In this paper, we propose a noise-canceling CP to improve in-band noise. The prototype of the proposed CP embedded in a 28-GHz LC-PLL was fabricated using 16nm FinFET process and 1.2-dB improvement of single sideband (SSB) integrated phase noise is achieved. As the results of in-band noise improvement, occupied area for the CP can be reduced to 22%.

The development of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is progressing rapidly. Many efforts, such as capturing images immediately after the disaster, grasping building damage, and calculating the amount of debris are proposed for disaster mitigation and disaster response. Fire bureaus (FBs) in Japan also have installed UAVs, and the practical utilization of UAVs is demanded in actual activities. In the previous paper, we presented the utilization of UAVs with Wi-Fi sensing function for search and rescue (SAR) operation. However, it was difficult for us to deploy in the field because practitioners could not appreciate the relationship between new operations and existing operations. In practice, practitioners in FBs learn many skills through exercise and training and get experiences through practical operations. In this paper, to support the smooth installation, we propose a methodology of building workflow for SAR operation including UAV tasks. We visualize the workflow of new operations with UAVs and existing operations by using Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) with practitioners, and then we confirm the validity of the workflow using the Data Flow Diagram (DFD). WBS is a deliverable oriented hierarchical decomposition of the work to be executed by the project team. This paper presents the manual of SAR operation including UAV tasks as a reference model, and also describes a strategic planning process based on workflow. It is essential for practitioners to share current information for situational awareness and make an intelligent decision.

The Great East Japan Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011. Tohoku region, off the coast of the Pacific Ocean, was severely damaged by the tsunami, and all of Japan was affected. Recently, torrential and guerrilla rains have been frequently occurring in Uji, Kyoto, which suffered massive damage on August 13, 2013. Soma, Fukushima, and Uji made tremendous efforts for supporting victims’ recovery by using spatial information and GIS. These successful efforts indicate that they had been using spatial information efficiently in their daily operations. This paper describes the learnings from the past efforts in disaster affected areas and discusses how these areas had been using spatial information for efficient daily operations. The paper makes suggestions to build a GIS-based information system with seamless interaction between daily operations and disaster management, and introduces new challenges faced by Kitakyushu, Fukuoka using spatial information based on cloud computing network for regional disaster resilient societies.

Torrential and guerrilla rains have recently happened frequently and caused damage in Japan. The Japan Meteorological Agency already has an observation system that covers individual administrative boundaries to provide hazard information. It is not possible with this system, however, to determine the risk of such rain coming “right here and now.” The purpose of this research is to develop Micromedia, an information system utilizing GIS and location information that provides all individuals in Japan with realtime disaster information anywhere, anytime using mobile phones (smart phones) and car navigation systems with GPS.

The open space area is necessary for disaster operation such as evacuation, clean-up, and logistics and temporary housing. Tokyo Metropolitan Earthquake will cause enormous damage and have far-reaching consequences. Therefore, local governments have to regulate wide-range cooperation for use of available open space area. In this study, 1) the problem schemes of open space is clarified based on the logistic process of Theory of Constraints, and 2) Geospatial distribution and size of open space area is analyzed quantitatively based on land-use database, 3) the conceptual design of the comprehensive open-space database management system is formulate considering decision-making process.

Our research team of industrial, governmental, and academic organizations had supported local governments using geographic information systems (GIS) at Odiya city in the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu Earthquake. We developed GIS applications for damage certification based on specific needs enabling municipal personnel to operate effectively during the initial post-disaster confusion. The team developed GIS and other databases and applications, and designed the certification desk layout. Based on our work in Odiya, we applied these solutions in the 2004 Niigataken Chuetsu Earthquake, 2007 Noto Hanto Earthquake, and 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsuoki Earthquake. We damage citification issuance and set up a master database for victims to help victims rebuild their lives. We discuss comprehensive solutions to damage assessment, database registration, damage certification, and victim assistance.

Efforts to create manuals on measures for effectively implementing post-disaster operations pose two problems - (1) Many practitioners have no practical experience in post-disaster operations and (2) Formats and methods depend on personal skills and effort. In this paper, we discuss how to extract priority operations using business impact analysis (BIA) based on business continuity plans and develop the projectmanagement-based business flow diagram (BFD) and workflow to support practical post-disaster operations. This approach focuses on creating manuals on enhancing responder awareness through workshops for building social capital.

Implementing enterprise geographic information systems (EGIS) for local governments usually involves high initial and follow-up cost, e.g., for data maintenance, caused by excessively detailed base maps based on public survey specifications, even though suchmaps are not needed for most municipal operations. This study analyzes requirements for reducing costs of an implementation and maintenance of local-government EGIS (LGEGIS). The study also analyzes goals for local-government EGIS (LGEGIS). Both the analysis in this research are based on the case of the Kashiwazaki City EGIS in response to the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-oki Earthquake.

The objective of this research is to develop an information processing procedure that is capable of integrating various data sources for the purpose of building a centralized victims’ database that can be utilized throughout the city to support various relief activities. In most cities stricken by disaster, availability of data resources is limited in both quantity and quality. However, it is vital to build an accurate Victims’ Database promptly in order to provide satisfactory services to disaster victims. Therefore, this paper proposes GeoWrap, a new methodology in information processing, that can maximize available datasets of differing accuracy while building accurate databases. GeoWrap effectiveness is examined by developing the victim database for Kashiwazaki City in Japan.

The magnitude 6.8 Niigata Chuetsu earthquake occurred on October 23, 2004. A major responsibility of cities in Japan hit by earthquakes is to conduct effective disaster relief while assessing the changing situation. On such assessment requiring large numbers of temporary workers is damage assessment, e.g., of buildings and lifelines. We organized emergency damage investigation, unifying damage investigation and post investigation information processing based on knowledge from GIS-based support by the Kyoto University’s Disaster-prevention Research Institute. The two-part effort consisted of easy-input GIS applications and technology handling information from field damage investigation, automated geographic information and photographic association at disaster sites and creating reports on investigation results. We thus streamlined emergency damage investigation in aiding affected areas.

During the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu Earthquake in Ojiya City, and 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-oki Earthquake in Kashiwazaki City, our research team built databases of building damage assessment results based on geographical coordinates and damage certification support systems (DCSS) for issuing damage certificates required by Japanesemunicipalities providing citizens with post-disaster recovery assistance. This paper discusses four major issues on databases and DCSS development, together with measures for solving these issues.

The Chuetsu earthquake restoration and revival support geographic information system (GIS) project was launched after the 2004 Chuetsu earthquake. It was the first project to gather disaster GIS data at one place, and provide them by Web GIS from off–site of the disaster site in Japan. To facilitate sharing disaster geospatial information, we introduced a framework of Geography Network as GIS portal. The GIS portal was based on loosely–coupled system architecture. Therefore, it was able to change the system structure by system requirement of the project. The GIS portal was used continuously and commonly for the 2005 Fukuoka Earthquake and 2005–2006 Heavy Snow Disaster and the 2007 Chuetsu-Oki Earthquake. In this paper, we define the system requirement to share disaster geospatial information by knowledge from case studies, and describe a practical method to build the framework, demonstrate the benefit from the framework.

We are exposed to various kinds of Multi-hazards due to natural disasters, terrorist attacks and epidemic’s outbreak. In any of these crises, national and local governments must take in managing emergency responses effectively. Though one of the many measures is to build information systems against disaster, these systems are tools for estimating post disaster damage. This effort is not, however, implemented either well or effectively in most cases. Our research team had supported local governments using GIS in cases such as the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu Earthquake, the 2007 Noto Hanto Earthquake, and the 2007 Niigataken Chuetsuoki Earthquake. Through these experiences, we reconfirmed the positive effects of location information and GIS. We also reconfirmed the need for both implementation speed and flexible use in their implementation. This paper describes how we built inexpensive integrated GIS for local governments to implement in emergency response andmanagement from experiences and knowledge on disaster affected area.

Emergency Mapping Center (EMC) activities at Chuetsu-oki Emergency Operation Center (EOC) are an innovative approach to disaster management, originating in Niigata Prefecture. This represents three important “firsts” in Japan – (1) the first disasterresponse digital mapping providing common operational pictures (COP) to local responders in real time, (2) the first collaborative emergency operations center (EOC) information analysis team, and (3) the first EMCstaff not directly supporting operation function but supporting staff function of EOC.

This paper aims at suggesting strategy for supporting various activities, which are rescue, fire fighting, and transportation of relief commodities and others after earthquake occurs by utilizing road network model. These activities must be considered time pass from emergency .response to recovery after earthquake occurs. It means that the road network model for supporting these activities must consider the physical changes from the damage to the restoration. Firstly, we researched the case of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake regarding to physical damage and restoration of road. Secondly, we built road network model by using node expansion model and examined the way of description considered physical and chorological changes of road after earthquake occurs. In order to reflect some changes of road, we assigned the priority cost to nodes. Finally, we developed prototype to search shortest path by using priority node cost and Dijkstra in city of Yokohama.

For realizing a single chip HTS integrated microwave receiver, a superconducting slot antenna and a Si-CMOS low noise amplifier (LNA) combined with a broad band matching circuit composed of coplanar waveguide (CPW) meanderline resonators has been designed and tested. By applying the filter technique and using admittance inverters (J inverters), we propose a new design method of CPW broadband impedance matching circuit connected to low and high impedance loads such as HTS antenna and CMOS device. Based on the design method, we designed a Chebyshev type impedance matching circuit connecting with slot antenna and CMOS-LNA at 10 GHz center frequency. More over, in order to increase the antenna directivity, we designed 2-dimensional antenna array by folding the slot antenna.

Two methods and a system for the measure against slope failure disaster using GIS are proposed in this paper. 1) Method of extracting cliff and potential area, suffered from slope failure, by DEM and Landuse data. 2) Method of extracting potential slope failure area by rainfall data, and a system of conveying this information to local residents. These methods can be applied to many places where these data are available. Moreover, dangerous cliffs and the areas are extracted at the same time even in wide city area. These methods will allow us to extract dangerous cliff and area without fieldwork, and this information will help local residents with proper actions. Minami ward, Yokohama city, was selected as a study area.

This special issue introduces 12 papers on a variety of best practices for effective emergency management using geospatial database and geographic information system (GIS). The first seven papers are grouped under GIS in action, show how GIS is used for different disaster reduction services. In response to the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake, GIS maps have been a part of Niigata PrefectureGovernment Emergency Operation Center work to aid in decisionmaking by providing Common Operational Picture (COP) as detailed by Tamura et al. A victim database was used as the key for integrated victim support in Kashiwazaki City in long-term recovery as detailed by Inoguchi et al. The success of GIS-based postdisaster operations vastly impacts on local governments in Wajima City, hit by the 2007 Noto Hanto Earthquake, where the use of GIS continued and expanded as an effective tool for building local government agency response capacity as detailed by Ura et al. In Kashiwazaki, the failure to apply municipal integrated GIS in postdisaster operations changed GIS policy to a less expensive service-oriented GIS readily available for local government agency use as detailed by Honma et al. A nationwide GIS map archive for researchers contains maps created at different disaster response stages as detailed by Nawa et al. Visualization of disaster impact using GIS is a powerful tool for disaster mitigation and preparedness, with impact by a worst-case-scenario magnitude 7.3 Tokyo Metropolitan earthquake as detailed by Suzuki et al. Design principles for visualization are reviewed by Urabe et al. In Japan, damage certification is used as the basis for deciding public and private support eligibility for quake victims, making it imperative for local governments to issue certification based on housing damage assessment results as soon and as fairly as possible. Based on practices in Kashiwazaki City following the 2007 Niigataken Chuetsu-oki earthquake, damage to 64,000 household footprints was assessed within one month as detailed in the last five papers. Two papers cover GIS-based data acquisition in housing damage assessment - PDA-assisted real-time input as detailed by Tonosaki et al., and OCRassisted paper result conversion as detailed by Higashida et al. In addition to housing damage assessment data, preexisting residential and housing databases should be integrated. Basic principles for creating this new database using GeoWrap are detailed by Yoshitomi et al. and implemented for Kashiwazaki as detailed by Matsuoka et al. In anticipating future disasters, a proposal to integrate local government operations both daily routine and emergency management was made by Urakawa et al. We appreciate the support of the Special Project for Governance in Ubiquitous Society (2007-2009) by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Special Project for Metropolitan Earthquake Disaster Mitigation in Tokyo Metropolitan Area (2007-2011) by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (MEXT). Lastly, we would like to appreciate all the authors for their wonderful contribution as well as all the blind reviewers for their dedication to make this issue more valuable.