NTT Data Kansai is developing a Smart City platform to promote urban and regional regeneration in Japan and other countries. The platform known as EYE-Portal, is scheduled for first release in October 2023.

Japan has one of the most acute population crises in the world, with falling birth rates and a rapidly ageing society. This is accompanied by an increasing concentration of the population in cities in the country’s central belt. The result is that many regions and towns throughout Japan are suffering decline and depopulation.

The EYE-Portal platform and accompanying app is aimed at reversing this trend by improving the quality of life for citizens in cities and regions throughout Japan and enable smart city management. The platform also aims to connect local governments, companies and citizens to solve increasingly complex regional issues, helping enable regional revitalisation.

The company aims to collaborate with local governments to conduct demonstration experiments on the use and application of the platform and app, collaborate with sustainable development goal (SDGs) services in mobility and healthcare, administrative services such as electronic applications, and electronic coupon functions of local stores to get closer to users.

NTT Data Kansai describes EYE-Portal is an application to serve as a hub for consumers, local governments, and local businesses, linking and fusing various services and allowing users to use services that are more closely related to their lives.

AI is incorporated into the platform to improve selection of regionally specific information and wide-area information obtained from City OS according to lifestyle and attribute information and recommend it to consumers. By linking the various events and services of local governments and local businesses with the schedule function for each consumer, it aims to encourage behavioural changes in consumers and feed back the results to local governments and local businesses.

The platform can serve as a portal for a number of local government and smart city functions such as mobility and healthcare.

The platform will include the ability to build apps for iOS and Android, allowing real-time push notifications. In addition, based on the various registered information, it can be used to provide various services such as sales promotion activities, volunteers, crime prevention, and welfare tailored to each user.