In order to revitalize the rcommunities, many municipalities with declining populations are making efforts to utilize the “history” and “culture” of the region for community development and tourism. However, first of all, it is necessary to academically clarify what are the characteristics of history and culture of the region, and to think of effective ways to use them. The center conducts measurement surveys of historical buildings and townscapes to study the value of cultural assets and methods of utilization, and reports and makes proposals to prefectures and municipalities. We are also promoting research on the utilization of cultural assets at an academic level with the aim of contributing to the local communities, we are training and educating human resources with the ability of “cultural thinking ability” which means to see and think about things from a new point of view with understanding of coexistance and interdependency included in the concept of culture based on the understanding of what is culture. Overseas, we are transferring this technology and training engineers in the Philippines, Bhutan, Fiji, etc., making use of our original restoration method based on surveys of traces.

With the spread of Mobile Mapping System (a vehicle equipped with GNSS, laser scanners and cameras), huge point clouds are being accumulated rapidly. My study is to make effective use of this data in current road-related measurement system. And also I’m trying to display this as a high-speed 3DCG via the Internet.

Metaheuristic algorithms such as simulated annealing, iterated local search, genetic evolutionary algorithms are known to be effective optimization methods that can be used for various problems in engineering field. Our research interests are developments, improvements and analyses of high-performance evolutionary algorithms and metaheuristic algorithms based on local search for optimization problems such as Maximum Clique Problem, Graph Coloring Problem, Quadratic Assignment Problem, Facility Location Problem, Vehicle Routing Problem, Scheduling Problems, etc.

I am currently conducting researches on pedestrian flow modeling, simulation, and optimization. There are two reasons for investigating pedestrian flow. One is to solve the day-to-day problems of crowded public spaces, such as stations, shopping malls, pavements and many other places. The other is to optimize evacuation procedures from densely buildings and urban centers in case of an unpredicted event.