aster.cloud aster.cloud
  • /
  • Platforms
    • Public Cloud
    • On-Premise
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Data
  • Architecture
    • Design
    • Solutions
    • Enterprise
  • Engineering
    • Automation
    • Software Engineering
    • Project Management
    • DevOps
  • Programming
    • Learning
  • Tools
  • About
  • /
  • Platforms
    • Public Cloud
    • On-Premise
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Data
  • Architecture
    • Design
    • Solutions
    • Enterprise
  • Engineering
    • Automation
    • Software Engineering
    • Project Management
    • DevOps
  • Programming
    • Learning
  • Tools
  • About
aster.cloud aster.cloud
  • /
  • Platforms
    • Public Cloud
    • On-Premise
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Data
  • Architecture
    • Design
    • Solutions
    • Enterprise
  • Engineering
    • Automation
    • Software Engineering
    • Project Management
    • DevOps
  • Programming
    • Learning
  • Tools
  • About
  • Public Cloud

How Tens Of Thousands Of Japanese Found Their Way To COVID-19 Vaccination Centers With The Help Of Navagis And Google Maps Platform

  • aster.cloud
  • March 26, 2022
  • 4 minute read

Editor’s Note: David Moore, Founder and CEO of Navagis, shares his story of teaming up with the Google Maps Platform team to help people across Japan get vaccinated amid COVID-19 pandemic.

The roots of Navagis go back to Hurricane Katrina, when I led an Army Corps of Engineers team that deployed 3D mapping technologies with Google Earth to respond to critical needs on the U.S. Gulf Coast. As a Google Cloud Premier Partner we work across various industries and organizational types to solve location intelligence challenges with our software solutions.


Partner with aster.cloud
for your next big idea.
Let us know here.



From our partners:

CITI.IO :: Business. Institutions. Society. Global Political Economy.
CYBERPOGO.COM :: For the Arts, Sciences, and Technology.
DADAHACKS.COM :: Parenting For The Rest Of Us.
ZEDISTA.COM :: Entertainment. Sports. Culture. Escape.
TAKUMAKU.COM :: For The Hearth And Home.
ASTER.CLOUD :: From The Cloud And Beyond.
LIWAIWAI.COM :: Intelligence, Inside and Outside.
GLOBALCLOUDPLATFORMS.COM :: For The World's Computing Needs.
FIREGULAMAN.COM :: For The Fire In The Belly Of The Coder.
ASTERCASTER.COM :: Supra Astra. Beyond The Stars.
BARTDAY.COM :: Prosperity For Everyone.

The experience taught me how powerful mapping insights can be in protecting lives when disaster strikes. The COVID-19 crisis brought a brand new human challenge to the world and like other countries, Japan found itself struggling to vaccinate its 125 million people, while trying to communicate about where (and under what circumstances) people could get their vaccines.

Our end goal was to build a reliable, enriched, real-time dataset on Japan’s vaccination centers. Living in Japan, seeing some confusion and anxiety, I felt great urgency when I accepted the mission on behalf of our team.

From the very beginning we faced many challenges. Japan was experiencing unique difficulties in building an accurate real-time vaccine locator. First, we noticed the fragmentation of address information across thousands of local governments, from Hokkaido in the north to subtropical Okinawa in the south. Second, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare had launched a website of nationwide vaccination sites, which they were constantly updating data sources. We noticed the location information was prone to inconsistencies due to its dispersion at the local level, and different conventions among prefectures on writing addresses. In order to ensure the integrity of a massive amount of decentralized data, mostly in Japanese, we required on-the-ground presence and experience.

Read More  Educational Institutions Select Nutanix To Support Distance Learning Amid COVID-19 Pandemic

In addition, we needed to go beyond simply mapping the location of vaccination centers. Each one needed to be a one-stop shop for all information regarding vaccination, including opening hours, safety precautions, and qualifications for getting the COVID-19 vaccine.

Round-the-clock teamwork builds a helpful, informative mapping solution

People might think of mapping as all about AI, advanced satellites, and cloud computing power. Of course, these are essential. What is less known is the massive amount of human toil and dedication that goes into making vaccine location information available especially for an urgent health mission for a country as large and complex as Japan.

Realizing our task was urgent, we worked with the Google Maps Platform team across time zones and over weekends to make this happen fast. In some cases a vaccine center was at a place where one would not normally expect to get a vaccine—like a pop-up location at a convention center. So we matched vaccine center addresses from the government website against Google Maps Platform’s Places data.

 

Navagis architecture
Architecture of the validation process

In under two weeks, we had identified, matched and marked tens of thousands of  locations as vaccination centers around the country. Moreover, the power of the Geolocation API and Places API enabled us to provide richer details for many of the centers.

Japan vaccine locator map

One of the unique aspects of this project was being able to surface our work across multiple channels to accomplish a single goal. We were able to work with Google to ensure the vaccine centers appeared on the consumer user-facing Google Maps apps and website, with  information to help citizens learn where and how to get their vaccine. Our team was in hourly contact with requests such as “this center is mission-critical, can we get it mapped?” They were able to quickly get the site listed and visible on the map for end-users. This was a big human mobilization.

Read More  9 Tips From APAC Game Developers In COVID-19

Powerful mapping APIs for pinpointed vaccine location information

We couldn’t have accomplished the massive task of validating 35,000 vaccination sites in such a short period of time without Google’s mapping APIs. The Maps Geocoding API and Places API enabled us to take location data from the government website, and quickly verify whether the location existed, or not, with  up-to-date places intelligence.

japan vaccine locator streetview

The Places API served a critical role in two ways: breadth of information (covering Japan’s entire territory), and depth of information (complex insight into each place, such as landmarks and phone numbers).

The ability to take the addresses provided by the government of vaccination sites, run them through the Places API, and assess the address quality helped enormously. Google Street View, meanwhile, provided a further level of validation, enabling us to visually identify the specific locations where errors remained, and manually identifying clinics and hospitals before identifying their precise latitude and longitude within cities in Japan.

Looking beyond COVID-19

Japan went from being a laggard in global vaccination rates before the summer of 2021 to one of the leaders, with nearly 80% of the population fully vaccinated. And, daily confirmed cases had been as low as 100 nationwide prior to Omicron emerging globally.

The prospect of putting to bed our adventure with the Japan Vaccine Locator couldn’t bring us more joy.

Except perhaps, the prospect of helping people rediscover the joy of a return to normalcy—in  partnership with Google Maps Platform.

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.

 

By David Moore, Founder and CEO of Navagis
Source Google Cloud

Read More  SUBARU Goes Live With Oracle Cloud Infrastructure For High Performance Computing

For enquiries, product placements, sponsorships, and collaborations, connect with us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you!

Our humans need coffee too! Your support is highly appreciated, thank you!

aster.cloud

Related Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Geolocation API
  • Google Maps
  • Navagis
  • Places API
You May Also Like
View Post
  • Computing
  • Public Cloud
  • Technology

United States Army Enterprise Cloud Management Agency Expands its Oracle Defense Cloud Services

  • April 15, 2025
DeepSeek R1 is now available on Azure AI Foundry and GitHub
View Post
  • Public Cloud
  • Technology

DeepSeek R1 is now available on Azure AI Foundry and GitHub

  • February 2, 2025
Cloud platforms among the clouds
View Post
  • Computing
  • Learning
  • Public Cloud

Best Cloud Platforms Offering Free Trials for Cloud Mastery

  • December 23, 2024
Vehicle Manufacturing
View Post
  • Hybrid Cloud
  • Public Cloud

Toyota shifts into overdrive: Developing an AI platform for enhanced manufacturing efficiency

  • December 10, 2024
IBM and AWS
View Post
  • Public Cloud

IBM and AWS Accelerate Partnership to Scale Responsible Generative AI

  • December 2, 2024
COP29 AI and Climate Change
View Post
  • Public Cloud
  • Technology

How Cloud And AI Are Bringing Scale To Corporate Climate Mitigation And Adaptation

  • November 18, 2024
Cloud Workstations
View Post
  • Public Cloud

FEDRAMP High Development in the Cloud: Code with Cloud Workstations

  • November 8, 2024
View Post
  • Public Cloud

PyTorch/XLA 2.5: vLLM support and an improved developer experience

  • October 31, 2024

Stay Connected!
LATEST
  • 1
    Just make it scale: An Aurora DSQL story
    • May 29, 2025
  • 2
    Reliance on US tech providers is making IT leaders skittish
    • May 28, 2025
  • Examine the 4 types of edge computing, with examples
    • May 28, 2025
  • AI and private cloud: 2 lessons from Dell Tech World 2025
    • May 28, 2025
  • 5
    TD Synnex named as UK distributor for Cohesity
    • May 28, 2025
  • Weigh these 6 enterprise advantages of storage as a service
    • May 28, 2025
  • 7
    Broadcom’s ‘harsh’ VMware contracts are costing customers up to 1,500% more
    • May 28, 2025
  • 8
    Pulsant targets partner diversity with new IaaS solution
    • May 23, 2025
  • 9
    Growing AI workloads are causing hybrid cloud headaches
    • May 23, 2025
  • Gemma 3n 10
    Announcing Gemma 3n preview: powerful, efficient, mobile-first AI
    • May 22, 2025
about
Hello World!

We are aster.cloud. We’re created by programmers for programmers.

Our site aims to provide guides, programming tips, reviews, and interesting materials for tech people and those who want to learn in general.

We would like to hear from you.

If you have any feedback, enquiries, or sponsorship request, kindly reach out to us at:

[email protected]
Most Popular
  • Understand how Windows Server 2025 PAYG licensing works
    • May 20, 2025
  • By the numbers: How upskilling fills the IT skills gap
    • May 21, 2025
  • 3
    Cloud adoption isn’t all it’s cut out to be as enterprises report growing dissatisfaction
    • May 15, 2025
  • 4
    Hybrid cloud is complicated – Red Hat’s new AI assistant wants to solve that
    • May 20, 2025
  • 5
    Google is getting serious on cloud sovereignty
    • May 22, 2025
  • /
  • Technology
  • Tools
  • About
  • Contact Us

Input your search keywords and press Enter.