Infrastructure protection initiatives involving citizens and infrastructure hunting are growing!
The Whole Earth Foundation (hereafter, WEF), a non-profit organization that builds, provides,and operates a citizen-participation-type infrastructure information platform, has the slogan“protecting infrastructure together with citizens.” We are promoting activities to thoroughlyinspect infrastructure such as manholes and utility poles.
Using the social contribution type Web 3 application “TEKKON” as a tool to collect photographicimages of social infrastructure “manholes” and “utility poles,” we held an event called“Infrastructure Hunting” to invite many citizens to participate, leveraging citizen power. WEF willwork on comprehensive infrastructure inspections all over the world. WE aim to solve the socialproblem of aging infrastructure and realize the construction of a low-cost infrastructuremaintenance ecosystem through citizen participation by providing infrastructure image datacollected by citizens to local governments and infrastructure companies for use in maintenanceand management. Most importanly, WEF intends to connect safe infrastructure to the nextgeneration.
The rise of TEKKON activities spreads through citizen participation.
Following are the results of the citizens five months after “TEKKON” was made available to thegeneral public on October 17, 2022.
The number of manhole images collected by citizens increased by 24% from January to over2.71 million. The number of daily posts continues to increase!To further revitalize activities to inspect aging infrastructure using citizens' power, an event willbe held every weekend beginning in January this year to encourage people to intensivelyacquire images of infrastructure by identifying two districts from among municipalities across thecountry. Furthermore, we began holding events in the Philippines in January, and citizens invarious locations took advantage of their free time before going to work, during lunch, and ontheir way home. A total of approximately 2.71 million manhole data (manhole images acquiredglobally) have been collected (as of February 28, 2023).
TEKKON "Infrastructure Hunting"
TEKKON hosts three to five "TEKKON Citizen Meetups" per month, and an offline community isbeing formed. Normally, online communication is the primary mode of communication forTEKKON, but by meeting in person, citizens can better understand one another and the circle offriendship grows. Furthermore, as a face-to-face relationship was established, TEKKON citizenvolunteers planned events, and an organic community was formed.
With the goal of expanding further in the future, "TEKKON Citizen Meetups" will be held once amonth throughout Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. A sense of camaraderie emerges from gathering TEKKON citizens to exchange opinions and information, and by having fun doing infrastructure maintenance activities, we will spread the mechanism that leads to effective solutions to infrastructure problems globally.
Waterworks, manholes, utility poles, and guardrails are examples of social infrastructure. It is an essential infrastructure not only in Japan, but in any city around the world, but its deterioration has become a major social issue. The WEF believes that by involving the general public(citizens) in the problem-solving process, infrastructure collapse can be avoided. We are advocating for a replenishment system.
TEKKON;
Name of Application: TEKKON
Fee：Free to Play
iOS：App Store（iPhone)
Android：GooglePlay
Software：iOS iPhone（iPhone6s + OS ver.15 later）
Android：Android（Android OS ver.7 or later）
Started：October 17, 2022
Whole Earth Foundation;
Headquarters: Singapore
Japan Office: Shibuya 1-chome Building 7F, 1–3–9 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Established: December 2020
URL: http://www.wholeearthfoundation.org/ja/
The Whole Earth Foundation is about citizen participation. It is an organization thatpromotes activities aimed at solving social issues of aging infrastructure by participating ina game. In “TEKKON” using Web3, tokens are used as rewards for infrastructure data. Itis a mechanism that encourages users to collect more infrastructure data and returnseconomic value to users who have contributed to society. Functions of the new app“TEKKON” will continually be enhanced and the circle of social activities “Tekkatsu”expanded through the “Manhole Holy War” event nationwide, which has been held so farto call for citizen participation.