Mapry Co., Ltd. (Head office: Tamba City, Hyogo Prefecture, CEO: Keiji Yamaguchi, hereinafter Mapry), which provides the geospatial information app platform service “mapry,” will begin selling “mapry Bridge (called Mapry Bridge),” an application that supports inspection work for small bridges, from February 2024. Ahead of that, we have signed a sales agency agreement with Basis Consulting Co., Ltd. (Head office: Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, CEO: Yuaki Ishikawa, hereinafter Basis Consulting), which develops the social infrastructure management platform SIMPL® for public and private infrastructure facility managers, and we are pleased to announce that the two parties have established a strategic partnership.

■mapry Bridge Overview

Mapry Bridge is a smartphone app based on the map function of iOS mapry that can associate and save and display bridge drawings (damage drawings, plan views, elevation views, etc.) registered on the map with point clouds captured by the 3D scanner function and photos taken by the smartphone camera.

With this application, engineers can now complete the recording work that was previously done manually by engineers using field notebooks and digital camera photography during on-site inspections and inspection sites for small bridges with just one smartphone.

Links point clouds and photo data acquired on-site to previous bridge reports, damage drawings, and location maps entered in advance on mapry Bridge. The organized on-site data is automatically placed in the record field notebook on mapryGIS, Mapry’s WebGIS application released in November of this year, making it easy to exchange data between the field and the office. This not only simplifies on-site work, but also eliminates the labor of drawing work based on huge amounts of paper documents that were previously done in-house, making it a solution that revolutionizes the way infrastructure inspection records are recorded.

■The bridge inspection market where mapry Bridge is needed

Since 2014, regular inspections every five years have been mandatory for road bridges and tunnels managed by the national and local governments. Currently, there are about 730,000 bridges in Japan, and by simple calculation, inspections are conducted nationwide for more than 140,000 bridges every year.

In recent years, many digital and new technologies, such as drones, have been introduced into bridge inspection work, reducing the burden of on-site work and realizing digital transformation of inspection work. However, about 550,000 bridges, which account for three-quarters of the total, are small bridges with a total length of about 2 to 15 meters, and many of these bridges are under the management of local governments, and ample inspection budgets are not allocated to these bridges.

In the domestic bridge inspection market, sites that are worth the introduction and operating costs of new technologies such as drones are actually in the minority overall. For this reason, with the shortage of workers and the review of analog regulations, new technologies suitable for inspection work on small bridges where large costs cannot be spent on inspection are required, but the current situation is that effective new technologies have not yet spread.

In this market, Maply Bridge, which can be inspected with just a commonly used smartphone, is likely to become a new technology that is expected to be used at many sites managed by local governments across the country.

■Pain points of survey companies that inspect bridges

When developing Maply Bridge, we conducted our own survey of survey companies and found that in addition to requests for improvements such as improving the safety of on-site work and the efficiency of inspection work, there was also a great deal of expectation for reducing the burden of data organization work during indoor work.

Handwritten field notebooks created at the site were often difficult to read due to poor handwriting by engineers or dirt due to weather conditions, and the recorded photos from the site were all similar, making it difficult to determine which photo corresponded to which part of the damage diagram, and the simple task of repeatedly looking over the huge amount of documents transferred to paper was time-consuming. At the same time, inspection work for public works projects is concentrated in the fall, so outdoor workers who continue to carry out on-site inspection work during the busy season have to work on weekends just to hand over documents to indoor workers, and the labor required for communication between outdoor and indoor work is also a burden.

The reality is that If the information flow associated with these inspection tasks can be improved by Mapry Bridge, the workload for small bridge inspections can be significantly reduced, which is expected to address the shortage of infrastructure workers.

*Excerpt from Mapry’s own survey of inspection companies

■Comment from Representative Yamaguchi

The mapry bridge, which has been under development since last year, was unveiled to the public for the first time at the Infrastructure DX Competition hosted by the Kinki Regional Development Bureau a year ago, and as a result, it won the Excellent Technology Award. By utilizing our know-how cultivated in forestry, which is also an analog work like infrastructure inspection, we hope to reduce infrastructure inspection costs in basic municipalities nationwide by streamlining the analog work process of bridge inspection from handwriting to drawing by using 3D point clouds and automatic image organization, and contribute to the strengthening of the nation and the creation of a sustainable society.

■Comment from Representative Ishikawa

Currently, our company operates SIMPL® (Smart Infra Management Platform), which manages infrastructure maintenance data in multiple municipalities, and already manages 17 types of facility data, including not only bridges but also tunnels and rivers, and more than 80,000 facility data.

Through the operation of SIMPL, we have many opportunities to hear about the current situation and issues on the ground from local governments and inspection companies, and we feel that the planned review of analog regulations and the introduction of new technologies such as drones and BIM/CIM are important issues for local governments and companies.

The greatest appeal of mapry bridge is that by simplifying the workflow using digital technology, people of all ages and genders who are not familiar with inspection work can participate in bridge inspections. In addition, since the work can be done on a commonly used smartphone, we think it is also important that the barrier to introduction for local governments and inspection companies is extremely low. It is a solution that we would like to see used by basic local governments that do not have a large budget.

Our company’s SIMPL also aims to be an inexpensive system that can be easily started by even small municipalities and is easy to use for anyone, and it has a high affinity with mapry bridge, and we hope that in the future we can create synergy between the two in the maintenance and management of detailed infrastructure such as road signs that local governments have in addition to bridges.

■ About Mapry

Mapry is a service for everyone involved in surveying, forestry, disaster prevention, agriculture, and construction. We provide solutions that make it easy to acquire, analyze, and utilize 3D data, which has been difficult to do due to the cost of surveying equipment and the difficulty of operating and analyzing the equipment.

■Mapry Company Profile

Company name: Mapry Inc.

Location: 165 Tada, Kasuga-cho, Tanba-shi, Hyogo Prefecture (Head office)

Representative: CEO Keiji Yamaguchi

Website: https://mapry.jp

Inquiries regarding this matter: info@mapry.co.jp

■About Mapry Consulting

This company was established in 2017 to put into practical use the theme of “advancing infrastructure through information technology,” which was researched by CEO Yuaki Ishikawa at the University of Tokyo’s Interdisciplinary Information Studies School. We provide solutions and consulting that utilize advanced technologies such as ICT, AI, and cloud computing, mainly in infrastructure-related fields, and provide a system for human resource development.

■Basis Consulting Company Profile

Company name: Basis Consulting Co., Ltd.

Location: 4F Suidobashi Konpira Kaikan, 1-5-11 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo

Representative: Representative Director Ishikawa Yuaki

Website: https://basisconsulting.co.jp/

Inquiries regarding this matter: info@basisconsulting.co.jp