(Head Office: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; Group CEO: Yukihiro Maru) is pleased to announce the launch of the "Riverness Resilience Project," which aims to create a flexible and tolerant social infrastructure that can function in both emergencies and peacetime through cross-industrial collaboration among partners from different industries, ventures, government, research institutions, and other fields. The "LIVERNESS Resilience Project" will be launched.

Under the auspices of RIVANES, Aqua Clara Corporation, Canon Marketing Japan Inc. and East Japan Railway Company will participate as corporate partners in the first phase of the project. Eight ventures with technologies such as self-sustaining decentralized infrastructure, food security, rebuilding, satellite data, etc., and one Together with an academic team, we plan to develop solutions centered on disaster management.
In addition, we continue to invite companies, local governments, and universities to participate in this project.

Introduction of the first team

<Sponsored by

<Corporate Partners

<Venture Partners

<Academia Team

History of Reconstruction Assistance in Liverpool

On March 11, 2012, exactly one year after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, RIVERNESS launched the "Tohoku Education Support Project" led by employees with connections to the Tohoku region, and has been delivering science education to the Tohoku region together with companies and universities. As a founder of the education business since its establishment in 2002, RIVERNESS believes that educational activities for the next generation will be the starting point for solving regional issues, reconstruction, and creation of new towns in the affected areas, and has continued to offer on-site experimental classes and support for next-generation researchers.

In 2016, five years after the occurrence of the earthquake, the "period of intensive reconstruction" shifted to the "period of reconstruction and creation." In order to implement the research results of next-generation researchers working in the Tohoku region in society, RIVANES also held the "Science Castle Tohoku Conference," a conference for junior high and high school students, to provide research know-how, mentoring, and We have strengthened our support in all aspects, including the provision of research know-how, mentoring, funds, and equipment.

At the same time, in April 2016, the Kumamoto earthquake occurred, forcing over 180,000 people to live in evacuation shelters. At the same time, RIVERNESS and Kumamoto Prefecture launched the "Kumamoto Tech PlanterThe first time we were about to launch the "Mazda Global Fund" (MFG). While we were considering whether or not to implement the plan in light of the impact of the earthquake, Kumamoto Prefecture, which has a vision of "creative reconstruction," said to us, "In times like this, we will never stop taking on new challenges. We should do the Tech Planter not for restoration, but for creative reconstruction," and in July 2016, the implementation of the Kumamoto Tech Planter was realized.

Starting with Kumamoto, this initiative will expand to 12 regions across Japan, and by 2023, it will become a wide-area ecosystem that will produce ventures aiming for the world from universities and other research institutions and small and medium-sized companies in six prefectures in the Tohoku region.Tohoku Tech PlanterThe "MARUHAMMER" program has been launched. In addition, in Ishikawa Prefecture, where the Noto Peninsula earthquake occurred on January 1, 2024, from 2023, we will also launch the "Ishikawa Tech PlanterThe company is committed to building an ecosystem of ventures and researchers who are trying to change the world through science and technology.

We believe that the use of science and technology is indispensable in the reconstruction of the region. However, deep-seated issues have emerged that can no longer be solved by the technology, assets, and knowledge of a single organization alone. In addition, simply pursuing each initiative independently under the jurisdiction of a ministry or agency will not accelerate the speed of resolution.
At the time of 2011, RIVANES started its recovery activities from education and has since built a platform with over 3,000 teams of technology ventures and researchers and over 200 business companies. Among them, many ventures have been created in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake to solve disaster issues.

In the wake of the Noto Peninsula earthquake, we felt that it was finally time to bring together our accumulated technologies and knowledge to develop "deep tech," a collection of technologies for solving problems, and to develop a system to deliver them to the sites of problems and operate them in the local communities. In addition to the development of technology, education and community building involving the next generation will be important themes for the region where the technology is actually introduced and utilized.

Launch of the Resilience Project

Japan, a country known for its natural disasters, needs to be resilient in the face of earthquakes and other disasters, and in the wake of the Noto Peninsula earthquake that occurred on New Year's Day, 2024, ventures discovered and fostered through Tech Planter entered disaster areas and provided assistance in various ways, including the use of small-scale distributed water circulation systems to bathe and wash hands in areas without water. They have been engaged in a variety of support activities, including the provision of water and hand washing services in areas where water was cut off by small-scale distributed water circulation systems, and the use of drones to survey the interior of buildings.
In this context, ventures operating in the area voiced the following concerns: although each company has independent technologies, there is no system to connect them efficiently and effectively; there is no infrastructure to promptly implement the technologies in the field; and there is no mechanism or business to link contingencies and peacetime.

In fact, it is said that the Noto earthquake took a long time to restore the infrastructure necessary for daily life, preventing evacuees from returning to their homes; water pipes were destroyed over a wide area, cutting off roads and leaving 19,000 households without water even after two months; temporary housing did not meet demand, prolonging the evacuation period; and so on. The evacuation was prolonged because the demand for temporary housing could not be met.

However, with the Nankai Trough earthquake and an earthquake directly under the Tokyo metropolitan area predicted to occur, it is important that each organization not only take independent measures in the event of a disaster but also design towns and communities from both normal and emergency perspectives by combining independent and decentralized infrastructure (water, energy, communications, etc.) that can be used in the town on a regular basis, self-sustaining toilet systems, inspection and transportation systems using drones, disaster forecasting systems using satellite data, etc. in a complex cross-disciplinary manner. It will be important to design towns and communities from both peacetime and contingency perspectives by combining a variety of systems, such as self-sustaining and decentralized infrastructure (water, energy, communication, etc.), self-sustaining toilet systems, inspection and transportation systems using drones, and disaster prediction systems using satellite data, across different fields.
Furthermore, this issue is not limited to disasters, but is also a challenge faced by current social systems in general, which are pursuing large-scale and efficient systems. In the near future, various problems are expected to emerge, including the maintenance of living infrastructure functions due to aging infrastructure and depopulation.

Therefore, under the sponsorship of RIVERNESS, we have launched the RIVERNESS Resilience Project, a cross-disciplinary effort to create a flexible and tolerant social infrastructure from peacetime, together with three major companies, eight venture companies, and a team of students from academia who share the objectives of this project.
In the first phase, with disaster management as the main theme, we plan to develop business solutions for "self-reliant and decentralized infrastructure systems (water and energy)," "large-scale fire prevention systems," etc.

In the future, we will solicit themes related to resilience issues from Ishikawa, Kumamoto, and other local governments, and form project teams from different industries and fields by combining technologies possessed by venture companies and universities, and assets of medium-sized and large companies.

＜For inquiries regarding this matter, please contact
Liberace Corporation Matsubara, Tachibana
TEL: 03-5227-4198
E-mail [email protected]