Japan’s Water Board to monitor elder safety
Tokyo’s Waterworks Bureau, which manages the city’s water system, is linking its new electronic water meters with an alert system to check and compare individual water use at a certain time each day, and notify a specific phone contact to alert if the usage indicates that the resident may have had an accident.
The system will be configured to gather hourly water use at a set time – say 9 am after breakfast – and send the data to a nominated email or phone text. Recipients – probably relatives- would be able to tell if something was amiss.
The technology plans to address the situation where children may have left the family home and where a single person or couple could fall ill or die alone without anyone close by to regularly check their well being.
It is now ready for testing and the Tokyo Government is calling for volunteer households across the city’s 23 wards for a one year trial starting in March 2007. After then the Water Bureau will decide whether and how to commercialise the service.
