A Tourism Information Service for Safety during School Trips Hidekazu Kasahara 1 , Mikihiko Mori 2 , Koichi Kurumatani 3 , Masayuki Mukunoki 2 , Michihiko Minoh 2 1 Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University 2 Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies, Kyoto University 3 National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Abstract In this paper, we propose a tourism information service for student school trips that provides the current position of students and a history of movement during their trips for typical situations and helps students to move quickly to evacuation areas in the event of a disaster. The number of students that go on school trips in Japan is approximately two million per year. This is one of the largest group trip segments in the Japanese travel market. Students typically go on school trips during the third year of junior high school and also during the second year of senior high school. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, teachers and travel agencies are now required to ensure the security of students during school trips. However, the dedicated disaster information system is not useful for this purpose when a disaster occurs. There is a need for a system that is designed both for typical situations and also for disaster situations. An application system for tourists is suitable for a dual-purpose mission like this. We designed and implemented a tourism information system that consists of 1) a smartphone application that captures the students’ current position via GPS, 2) a server application that receives and accumulates the position information and provides the current position and a history of movement to the teachers, and 3) an additional application module that communicates information to the students about the evacuation area and the evacuation route in the event of a disaster and also provides direct verbal communication via IP phone. We have conducted field experiments in the Kyoto area and have received positive feedback from school teachers and travel agencies. Keywords: Tourist support, smart phone application, disaster evacuation, dual purpose, urban and social service 1 INTRODUCTION The number of students that go on school trips in Japan is approximately two million per year. Students typically go on school trips during the third year of junior high school and also during the second year of senior high school. This is one of the largest group trip segments in Japanese travel market. This school trip segment is heavily concerned with components of the tourism industry, such as travel agencies and accommodations, and local governments such as that of Kyoto City [1]. Teachers escort the students and are responsible for the safety of the students during school trips. This is different from personal trips, where the tourists are responsible for their own safety. On the other hand, it is also expected that the students will exercise autonomy during the planning process for these sightseeing tours and also while visiting the attractions [2]. Many teachers, chaperones, and parents need to use information technology in order to keep track of the students’ positions so that they can achieve two contrasting goals: security and autonomy. The teachers have no way to keep track of the students involved in their group activity. If the teachers can determine the students’ positions, they can quickly help them in the event of a disaster or accident. Existing security methods for school trips are based on the premise that these methods will only be needed for accidents and minor incidents that occur during non- disaster situations. They are not designed for disasters. For example, the manual for school trips to foreign countries [3] that is edited by the Japanese ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism only covers safety measures for injury, disease, and theft. However, since the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, teachers and travel agencies are now required to ensure the security of students during school trips because the students do not know where to evacuate. Also, during disaster situations, the number of stake holders who want to know the positions of the students increases dramatically. Information about the positions and safety of the students should be provided not only to the teachers who are on the trip, but also to the parents of the students and to the teachers who have stayed behind at the school. In situations where it is difficult for parents to confirm the safety of their students, it is possible for the disaster departments of local governments in the affected areas to be flooded with safety confirmation phone calls from parents. In fact, when the Great East Japan Earthquake occurred, the telephone system for the local government in Sendai City became unavailable. During disasters, the communication infrastructure tends to become saturated because of the vast amount of voice and data packet traffic. In fact, immediately after the Great East Japan Earthquake, cellular phone lines, other than Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) lines, were tied up not only in the affected area, but also in the Tokyo metropolitan area. Tokyo is far away from the affected area, but many people in Tokyo made phone calls in order to confirm the safety of relatives and friends. This fact is well-known. Therefore, many teachers, who are responsible for the safety of students during school trips, recognize that the availability of the cellular phone network is one of the key factors for ensuring the safety of students. There is an increasing need for services that provide information to teachers and other school-related persons about the positions of students during school trips. Positioning technology has been developed already. It was possible to obtain phone position information from PHS cell stations even 20 years ago [4]. Travel agencies rent GPS-equipped cellular phones to the schools. However, most students and teachers use phones only for voice communication. Therefore, this service does not meet the new requirements of teachers. Based on our experience during the Great East Japan Earthquake, we know that the dedicated disaster information system will not be useful if there is a disaster. 210 The 1st International Conference on Serviceology