Tokyo-based firm pitch product to advance disaster management

SEVERAL local government units in Cebu have shown interest in partnering with a Japanese technology firm to improve their disaster risk management strategy using artificial intelligence (AI).

In fact, the local disaster management office of Lapu-Lapu City expressed its interest in adapting the platform and making the city the flagship location in Central Visayas.

Representatives from the local government of Lapu-Lapu City believed that technology could help streamline and bolster emergency responses.

Spectee Inc., a Tokyo-based information analysis company, said a calamity-prone country, like the Philippines, might find its solution in quickly addressing emergency response situations through the help of AI.

Spectee Inc. is a data analytics firm that specializes in curating newsworthy social media videos for news media outlets. The company pitched its brainchild product “Spectee Pro” before the representatives from the private and public sectors in a gathering dubbed “AI-Solution Introduction Seminar” last Thursday, March 2, 2023, at the Marco Polo Plaza Cebu. The event was a collaboration between the Department of Trade and Industry and Japan International Corp. Agency.

Spectee Pro is an AI solution that enables the real-time ‘visualization of crisis’ to provide disaster-prevention and risk-management solutions through Social Networking Service Information.

Its team of human moderators patented AI technology of image recognition and text analysis, and worked closely together to fact-check information in serving its clients.

Satosho Negoro, the chief operating officer of Spectee Inc., told Sunstar Cebu that the Philippines is the perfect place to pioneer their product outside Japan.

“Aside from the Philippines being disaster-prone like Japan, many people speak good English, and plenty of Filipinos are digital-native,” Negoro said.

He also reasoned out that both countries are politically welcoming to each other.

The team takes pride that they currently lead in Japan’s AI-based emergency response market.

Spectee Inc. claims they are the top supplier of the product in both public and private sectors in Japan, and around 90 percent of the nation’s news agencies are under their wing. Among their clients are the media giants TV Asahi, NHK, Nippon TV, Yahoo! Japan, TBS, and others.

Negoro noted that the Philippines, being a part of Southeast Asia, is a key location for them to penetrate the rest of the Southeast Asian region.(KJF)