Field Informatics is one of four cores of the 21st Century Global COE Program “Informatics Education and Research Center in Knowledge Circulation Society” at Kyoto University.
Information systems as social infrastructures have improved as information technologies develop. However, numerous technological and social problems are surfacing: unfamiliar human-computer interfaces, the threat of unpredictable behavior based on unreliable knowledge acquired from the Internet, and the fragility of social information systems. These problems can be ascribed to the congestion of knowledge circulated among people, communities, and societies. In order to cope with these problems, Kyoto University established four research & education cores under the 21st Century Global COE program (see Figure 1 below)
The primordial knowledge model core focuses on the fundamental mechanisms underlying knowledge in co-action. In order to develop better human interfaces for knowledge communication, it integrates multi-modal, brain and biological measurements to uncover how knowledge and communication induce each other.
The knowledge search core focuses on new technologies to enable searching for reliable knowledge through a variety of sources, and on social systems and business models related to searching.
The field informatics core focuses on methodology for constructing social information systems based on collaboration with field experts.
The knowledge grid computing core focuses on the construction of reliable high-speed knowledge-service infrastructures to support the previous three cores.
Kyoto University Informatics Research Group is led by Prof. Toru Ishida, Head of Department of Social Informatics, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University. FIMO is working on the development of field monitoring tools for environment management and disaster mitigation in Vietnam. This scope is an application of field informatics to environment and disaster management.
FIMO had a meeting with Prof. Ishida on 4th November 2015. In the meeting, two sides updated their achievements in field informatics research. Prof. Ishida agreed together with FIMO to hold a seminar on Field Informatics in Hanoi in 2016.
