Page 464 - Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

434 Sustainable Cities and Communities Design Handbook

and other actors. These institutions are well funded and administratively
empowered, providing venues for addressing the multiple crises that threaten
Japan’s built and natural environments.
One example of the scale of Japan’s post 3-11 collaboration is the Japan
5
Academic Network for Disaster Reduction (JANET-DR). The JANET-DR
groups 54 academic associations, crossing multiple disciplinary boundaries
(including energy and spatial planning). It also cooperates with the prestigious
Science Council of Japan, whose coordinating role in Japan is roughly
equivalent to that of the American Association for the Advancement of Sci-
ence. The JANET-DR was formalized on January 9, 2016, building on an ad
hoc 30-association liaison that emerged in May 2011, shortly after 3-11. The
liaison played a large role in shaping Japan’s resilience debate, including smart
and compact cities, through 11 major events and several publications. On
November 1, 2016, the JANET-DR held their second disaster resilience
symposium, analyzing the worsening threat of typhoons and intense rain
(JANET-DR, 2016). They also published a detailed specialist volume
exploring water and landslide hazards in the context of climate change (Ikeda
et al., 2016).
Another example is seen in the fact that there are 12 separate collaborative
subsidy programs for fostering the deployment and development of renewable
energy and smart energy systems (e.g., heat and power microgrids). No fewer
than 6 of the 12 collaborations included METI and the MOE. And 9 of the 12
projects include 3 or more central agencies. 6
This degree of cooperation has already had a powerful impact on smart
community policy making. Japan’s EIS, mentioned earlier, was developed
through extensive consultation with the business community’s peak associa-
tions (METI, 2016). The EIS aims to increase the diffusion of distributed
energy alternatives and efficiency in the context of smart communities. The
EIS explicitly relies on a coordinated, strategic approach, rather than market
mechanisms. Its governance includes all levels of the state, business, aca-
demics, and civil society, and is backed up by ample fiscal and regulatory
action. The policy also seeks to exploit potential synergies between sectors.
This approach includes bringing the “Internet of things” directly into the en-
ergy economy, fostering even greater efficiencies and the uptake of an array of
renewables and hitherto wasted heat. Moreover, the EIS expressly commits
policy to diffuse smart communities. This objective reflects an expanding
policy of bolstering local government resilience through smart energy systems
and their capacity to exploit local energy resources (METI, 2016).
Furthermore, Japan’s overall policy integration on smart communities is
achieved within the National Resilience Plan (NRP). Fig. 21.5 illustrates how

5. The website of the JANET-DR is available at the following URL: http://janet-dr.com.
6. See (in Japanese) “On the 12 Collaborative Projects to Deploy Renewable Energy Over the Next
5 Years,” New Energy Net, April 14, 2017: http://pps-net.org/column/34210.