2.3 Remarkable Research Activities 
2.3.1 JERS-1 System Verification 
JERS-1 system verification program was 
proceeded after the launch of JERS-1 in 
February, 1992 by domestic and international 
Principal Investigators, MITI and NASDA. The 
program was combined with ERS-1 system 
verification. It continued until March,1995 and 
the result reporting meeting was held on 
November 29 to December 1 in 1994 in Tokyo. 
2.3.2 International Project in Asia and 
Pacific Region 
Global Research Network System(GRNS) was 
initiated by Science and Technology 
Agency(STA) in 1993 and will continue five 
years. Its aim is to establish human and 
information network in Asia and Pacific region. 
As the actual activities, various data sets have 
been created with the cooperation of relating 
institutes of Japan and several countries in Asia 
and Pacific region. STA also has been 
organizing an international project for 
microwave remote sensing application in tropical 
regions with four ASEAN countries, which was 
initiated in 1992 and will continue until March in 
1997. 
2.3.3 The Great Hanshin-Awaji 
Earthquake 
There was a large earthquake at Kobe City and 
Awaji Island in January, 1995 and more than six 
thousand peoples were killed. Many projects for 
assessment and investigation of the damage and 
the cause of the earthquake were organized. In 
remote sensing filed, many institutes/ 
organizations/ universities such as NASDA, 
Remote Sensing and Technology Center 
(RESTEC), National Institute for Earth Science 
and Disaster Prevention (NIESDP), 
Geographical Survey Institute (GSI), Geological 
Survey of Japan (GSJ), Earth Remote Sensing 
Data Analysis Center (ERSDAC), Tokai 
University, etc., were involved in studies for 
application of satellite remote sensing data. 
2.3.4 SAR Data Analysis and 
Application 
  
International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXI, Part B6. Vienna 1996 
   
Many intensive studies for Synthetic Aperture 
Radar(SAR) data analysis has been conducted 
using JERS-1 and ERS-1 SAR data mainly in a 
framework of JERS-1 verification program. The 
main targets were the basic data calibration and 
correction and information extraction for 
vegetation, agriculture, forestry, land use, 
geology and oceanic phenomena. Also SAR 
interferometry has been recognized to be a 
promising technology because it succeeded to 
detect the displacement by the Great Hanshin- 
Awaji Earthquake. 
2.3.5 Data Set Creation 
Various products for global or regional 
monitoring using satellite data sources have been 
developed using NOAA, MOS-1 and JERS-1 
data. Some of them were developed as a part of 
ISY activities. The data set examples are 
Vegetation Data Set in South-East Asia, Asian 
Land Cover Data Set, Sea Surface Temperature 
Data Set around Japan, Polar Extent Ice Data Set 
in Antarctica and Okhotsk, MESSR Mosaicked 
Data Set in Indo-China and SAR Mosaicked 
Data Set in Amazon. These activities will be 
expanded with the data set creation using 
ADEOS data. 
3. DEVELOPMENT OF GIS 
The developments of GIS in Japan during 1992- 
96 are as follows. 
3.1 Expansion of the use of GIS to 
smaller local governments 
GIS has been used mainly by large cities with 
more than one million population such as Tokyo, 
Osaka and Yokohama. Similarly in private 
company, only large companies such as Tokyo 
Gas have developed and used GIS. This is 
because the preparation of database for the 
installation of GIS costs much and only large 
organizations have staffs who have enough 
technical knowledge about GIS. However in the 
past four years, many smaller local governments 
with the population of 100,000 - 500,000 have 
started to use GIS. The reasons of this 
  
   
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