TECHNOLOGY, Quake prone to Japanese area runs disaster system on force.com

A coastal region of Japan for a heavy earthquake and possible tsunamis has implemented a cloud-based disaster management system run by Salesforce.com.
Shizuoka Prefecture, on the East coast of Japan in the region of the country is shaped around an underwater trough lured by the junction of two tectonic plates. It has been shaken by repeated large Temblors in the past centuries collectively, the "Tokai earthquake," and the Central Government has warned that with high underground stressed another imminent.
The local government started a new disaster-management system to build the first, last year which version of which in July live gone. It is based on Salesforce.com platform as-a service offering, force.com, which hosts hundreds of thousands of applications.
"It costs much more to our own server and network run, and when a disaster happens something as if they would very difficult, especially if the Office of the Prefecture was damaged,", Keisuke Uchiyama said a Shizuoka official who works with the system.
Japanese prefectures are the rough equivalent of the States.
The system is currently hosted by Salesforce.com servers in the United States and goes live, when an official disaster warning is issued by the Government. It combines details of important infrastructure such as roads, heliports and evacuation centers.
Salesforce.com says, that it GIS (geographical information system) data with XML, that of the Japan Meteorological Agency sent combined. Users can send with attached GPS coordinates and pictures also e-Mail updates from the field with their phones.
Uchiyama, said the original plan was to open access, but budget cuts forced to be moved and it is now only available for authorities and disaster-related groups. The system was implemented with a budget of over 200 million yen (US$ 2.6 million) in the first two years, down from an original allotment of about 500 million yen three years.
He said that it was used to track the situation last week when a powerful Typhoon by central Japan swept.
The obvious disadvantage of a hosted system is, that this important infrastructure is often destroyed during natural disasters. After the powerful earthquake and tsunami which hit eastern coast of Japan in March, some coastal towns were totally devastated and went weeks without basics like electricity or phone service. Local communities turned to Word of-mouth and public bulletin boards, to disseminate information and search for survivors.
"The network is cut over, is", Uchiyama said.

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