Release notes from MAPRISE, the reasoning behind our data-integration calls, event participations, industry analysis, and hiring updates. An RSS feed is available.
- ·8 min readRelease report
Where Are the Solar Panels, Actually? ― Trying to Draw Their Outlines with AI
In the Kyushu 7 prefectures alone, small-scale FIT-certified solar facilities number 63,416. Their location data is only accurate to the neighborhood level. Here's the record of trying to fill that gap with AI-based panel-coverage estimation — and how, in the end, machine learning alone wasn't enough, so we visually checked hundreds of cases by eye.
#Solar power #FIT #AI #Data quality #Kyushu
- ·7 min readRelease report
We Couldn't Map Water. We Could Map City Gas — a New Layer Born from One Comment
When we showed MAPRISE to a working real-estate professional, they asked whether the water and gas sections of the legally required disclosure statement could also be mapped or included in reports. We looked into it — water turned out not to be feasible, but city gas service areas across the Kyushu 7 prefectures could be mapped. Here's what we could and couldn't do, and the two design decisions we wouldn't compromise on.
#City gas #Real estate disclosure #Open data #Data quality #Kyushu
- ·12 min readRelease report
Two Weeks Harder Than Expected After Going Nationwide — Where 'Just Multiply the Count' Stops Working
In early August we took data nationwide in one push, from Kyushu's 7 prefectures to all of Japan. Over the past two weeks we polished it. Some layers, like appraisal reports and large-scale fill land, scaled by simply multiplying the count. Others, like location-optimization plan areas and historical topographic maps, needed to be checked one by one. Here's an honest record of where that line falls, and the unglamorous work of emailing government agencies when we got stuck.
#Nationwide expansion #Data quality #Location optimization plans #Appraisal reports #Source attribution #Regression testing
- ·9 min readRelease
We Mapped 2,966 Unused National-Owned Properties Nationwide
Using open data from Japan's Ministry of Finance, we've published a map layer covering 2,966 unused national-owned properties nationwide. Here's how location precision works, why book value isn't a sale price, and how this can be used in practice — from homebuilders to municipalities.
#National-owned property #Ministry of Finance #Open data #Real estate #Land acquisition
- ·11 min readRelease report
Eight Layers Nationwide, and the 19-Hour-52-Minute Land-Use Mesh Build
We took eight layers nationwide — borehole logs, flood inundation zones, disaster monuments, real-estate transaction history, and more. The heaviest of the eight, the land-use detailed mesh (all 9 fiscal years, roughly 64GB), took 19 hours and 52 minutes. Here's why, the two incidents we hit along the way, and how we split zero-touch automation from human judgment in the operating design.
#Nationwide expansion #Data quality #Monitoring #Regression testing #tippecanoe
- ·6 min readRelease report
Registry Cadastral Maps and PLATEAU — Clearing the Two Heaviest Datasets of Our Nationwide Rollout, During Obon
Of everything we've expanded nationwide, the Registry Office cadastral maps (parcel boundaries) and the PLATEAU 3D city model were by far the heaviest datasets. Here's why they matter, a little about how we shipped them, and how we plan to live with data that never truly finishes.
#Nationwide expansion #PLATEAU #Cadastral map #Data quality #Data updates
- ·5 min readRelease
From 7 prefectures in Kyushu to nationwide - a day spent checking data one sheet at a time
MAPRISE started out covering Kyushu's 7 prefectures. Today, layer after layer - elderly care and disability welfare service providers, census small-area statistics, economic census mesh, foreign population data, crime occurrence records, and the prefectural land price survey - expanded to all 47 prefectures. Here's an honest account of what we found along the way, and where things stand as we aim for nationwide coverage by the end of August.
#Nationwide expansion #Data quality #Open data #Regression testing #Kyushu
- ·7 min readRelease
An agent, not a person, keeps this data current - building attribute disclosure, nationwide land prices, and 24/7 uptime
At MAPRISE, an agent checks for new government data releases every month on its own, and carries the update through retrieval, verification, and publication end to end. We've also built a system that makes clear how much is actually known versus assumed for every building we cover, expanded published land price data to all 47 prefectures, and moved to round-the-clock uptime.
#Data quality #PLATEAU #Land prices #Automated updates #Uptime
- ·6 min readRelease
That intersection might actually be an accident hotspot - we mapped traffic accident and crime data
Everyone wants to live somewhere safe, if they can help it. Using open data published by the National Police Agency and Kyushu's prefectural police, we've plotted over 100,000 traffic accidents (5 years) and over 80,000 crime incidents (7 years) across all of Kyushu, color-coded by type and switchable by year. Here's the story behind it, told frankly, plus a personal take on using maps to cut across the silos in public data.
#Traffic accidents #Crime data #Public safety #Open data #Data democratization
- ·8 min readResearch
Is that building really "steel-frame"? We audited and corrected our building structure data
We found an error in how the PLATEAU building layer's "structure" categories (wood, RC, SRC, steel-frame, and so on) mapped to their underlying codes, and corrected it against the official international code list. Beyond fixing the display in AI chat and PDF reports, this post covers the role MAPRISE plays on top of PLATEAU as a national initiative, plus some layer-overlay ideas we've been dreaming up by industry.
#PLATEAU #Data quality #Building structure #AI #Open data
- ·6 min readRelease
Map nerds start from an area. Real-estate pros start from a pin. The one comment from the field that kicked off a 3-day rebuild of address search
"We always start by typing in the exact address, then work outward from there" - that comment from a real-estate company managing director and a former homebuilder pro reshaped how we think about address search. Over three days we rebuilt it for all of Kyushu down to the parcel level, catching kana variants and shorthand hyphenated addresses along the way. Here's the story of the team catching fire.
#Address search #Geocoding #UI/UX #Data update #Dev story
- ·5 min readEvent
I spoke at a Fukuoka Prefecture entrepreneurship-support training session — insights from those who support founders
In the middle of the second-round document screening for the Fukuoka Yokatoko Business Plan Contest, I received a call from the Fukuoka Prefecture SME Support Office, asking me to present MAPRISE's business plan at a training session for people who support new businesses across the region. Here's how the day went, and what I took away from it.
#Yokatoko Business Plan Contest #Fukuoka Prefecture #Speaking engagement #Entrepreneurship
- ·6 min readRelease
Before You Think "The Water Won't Reach Here" — Disaster Monuments as Letters From the Past
In Japan, disaster and land use have always come as a package. Volcanoes, earthquakes, typhoons. Most of the country is mountains, the rivers are steep, and flat land is scarce. We live on that scarce flat land, or on ground we cut and filled to make. Earlier generations carved what happened into stone. Here is why we put 278 natural disaster monuments across Kyushu on the map, and how to read them.
#Disaster monuments #Disaster prevention #Land history #GSI #Kyushu
- ·5 min readTutorial
You don't need to memorize 50+ layers — one-click Purpose Presets turn on exactly what you need
MAPRISE has more than 50 layers, and picking the right ones for a given purpose, one by one, is genuinely tedious. So we built "Purpose Presets": six buttons, each tuned to a specific business scenario — collateral appraisal, disclosure prep, land acquisition, and more — that switch on the right set of layers with a single click. Here's exactly what each preset turns on.
#Purpose presets #UI/UX #Layer management #How-to
- ·7 min readResearch
Site Selection in Japan, Done With Data: How We'd Evaluate a Business Location in Fukuoka
Search for "Japan market entry" and you get business-etiquette explainers and articles about Tokyo. But what actually decides whether a store or a branch works is a question that comes earlier: can a business survive in this specific spot? Using Fukuoka as the example, we walk through an actual location feasibility check in three steps — 500 m mesh population projections, switching to 250 m resolution, and overlaying station passenger counts with land prices.
#Site selection #Feasibility #Population forecast #Mesh statistics #Fukuoka City
- ·10 min readResearch
Tenjin Big Bang, Mapped: Inside Fukuoka's Skyline Boom While Japan Shrinks
Fukuoka keeps getting called Japan's fastest-appreciating city, and the Tenjin Big Bang redevelopment gets the credit. We checked the claim directly against MAPRISE's land-price and 3D-building data — down to a tower still under construction at ¥11.8 million per square meter — and against the population numbers that make the whole thing possible.
#Tenjin Big Bang #Fukuoka #Land price #Urban redevelopment #PLATEAU
- ·8 min readResearch
Japan's own "Great Wall" for defending Dazaifu — chasing the Mizuki earthwork across the map
After its defeat at the Battle of Baekgang, ancient Japan built a massive earthen rampart called "Mizuki" to defend Dazaifu. Line up a standard map, aerial photo, elevation-tint map, and hillshade map side by side in a four-way split, and the same dead-straight artificial ridge jumps out at you in all four. A map nerd digs history out of terrain and can't stop grinning about it.
#Mizuki #Dazaifu #Onojo Castle #Terrain #Hillshade map
- ·5 min readResearch
How TSMC's arrival moved land prices — mapping and charting Kikuyo Town, Kumamoto
TSMC's move into Kumamoto has sent land prices in Kikuyo Town moving fast. Using MAPRISE's price-change-rate map and per-point price trend charts, we compared the Kikuyo Hikarinomori area directly against an ordinary residential neighborhood elsewhere in Kumamoto City. A numbers-first look at the impact of a major plant arriving.
#TSMC #Kikuyo Town #Land price #Semiconductors #Kumamoto Prefecture
- ·3 min readResearch
How MAPRISE Scores Building Collapse Risk — Checking Our Work Against Real Data
We combine ground and building data with academic damage functions to estimate per-building collapse probability, then validate the results against real observation records and field surveys.
#seismic #simulation #beta #validation
- ·7 min readRelease
National Forest Boundaries, On the Map — Species, Stand Age, and Protection-Forest Status Now Visible in the New "National Forest (Sub-compartments)" Layer
Using the Forestry Agency's National Forest GIS Data (FY2024 edition), we've added a layer that displays Kyushu's national forests at the "sub-compartment" level for all 7 prefectures — with species, stand age, area, function type, and protection-forest designation. Here's how it changes what you see, alongside the existing Forest Area layer.
#national forest #forestry #data update #land screening #collateral appraisal
- ·6 min readResearch
Filling in PLATEAU's "unknown use" buildings — why Canal City showed up grey
MLIT's PLATEAU 3D city model leaves over 270,000 buildings across Kyushu with no recorded use — even landmarks like Canal City Hakata. Here's how we combined external data sources to fill in the use classification for 471 of them.
#PLATEAU #3D city model #MLIT #Open data #Case study
- ·6 min readResearch
Chasing the Hizen Moat sleeping beneath Tenjin, with MAPRISE's old-map layers
The "Stone-Paved Plaza" in the Tenjin underground mall quietly carries the memory of the Hizen Moat — a 50-meter-wide canal that once ran east-west between Fukuoka Castle and Tenjin. A map-and-history-obsessed developer went chasing its traces, overlaying the Meiji-era wetland and land-use layers along the way.
#Hizen Moat #Fukuoka Castle #Tenjin underground mall #Meiji-era wetlands #Ground
- ·6 min readTutorial
Reading 1.55 million Kyushu buildings through three lenses — how to use the PLATEAU Buildings layer
Built from MLIT's PLATEAU 3D city model, this layer color-codes roughly 1.55 million buildings across 17 Kyushu cities in three ways — by use, by seismic standard, and by height. We walk through each mode, who it helps across our five target industries, and the AI mode that analyzes six-scenario collapse probability from a single building click.
#PLATEAU #3D city model #Seismic standards #Earthquake simulation #AI
- ·6 min readRelease report
"Could we pull this off?" — plotting listed companies' real-estate holdings from their securities reports
Instead of planning everything out before starting, sometimes you just build and think as you go. That's how this trial came together: plotting the land and buildings that listed companies based in Fukuoka Prefecture disclose in their Annual Securities Reports, right on the map — with a direct link back to the source PDF for each one.
#Trial #EDINET #Annual Securities Report #In development #Listed companies
- ·6 min readResearch
Aging social infrastructure hidden in Japan's urbanized neighborhoods, Part 1 — the retaining wall nobody notices
Almost every neighborhood built by cutting into hills has one: a retaining wall. Concrete's service life, ownership gaps left by inheritance and vacant homes, the slow pace of administrative enforcement. We look at the aging risk sitting quietly underfoot, and how a platform like MAPRISE might help.
#Retaining walls #Aging infrastructure #Vacant-home problem #Disaster prevention #Urban planning
- ·6 min readTutorial
Why every official land appraisal has two appraisers — looking behind Japan's Land Price Publication with MAPRISE
Japan's Official Land Price Publication and Prefectural Land Price Survey actually have two independent real-estate appraisers evaluate every reference point. We walk through why two appraisers, what the "three-approach" valuation method is, and why plotting it all on a map in MAPRISE is so useful — with screenshots along the way.
#Appraisal report #Land Price Publication #Land Price Survey #XCT001 #Three-approach valuation
- ·5 min readRelease
Two ways of looking at "fill land" — Embankment Regulation Zones and Large-scale Fill Land, now added
We've added Land-alteration Work Regulation Areas / Specified Fill-land Regulation Areas (under Japan's embankment regulation law) and Large-scale Fill Land (valley-fill and slope-attached types) layers for all 7 Kyushu prefectures. These look similar but describe two very different things — "regulation on future fill work" versus "ground risk on existing developed land." Here's how MAPRISE displays both.
#Embankment regulation law #Large-scale fill land #Ground #Disaster prevention #Data update
- ·5 min readRelease
"What if it rained even harder?" — seeing flood risk in stages, with the Multi-stage Flood Simulation layer
We've added "Multi-stage Flood Simulation" data — newly compiled as National Land Numerical Information in fiscal 2025 — to MAPRISE. Switch between rainfall scales, from a frequent 1-in-10-year storm to the theoretical maximum 1-in-150-year event, and watch how flood extent and depth change on the map. We walk through it using the Onga River basin as an example.
#Multi-stage flood simulation #Disaster prevention #Hazard #National Land Numerical Information #Data update
- ·4 min readTutorial
"Transaction price" vs. "contract price" — do you know the difference? MAPRISE's real-estate price map now tells them apart by icon shape
Adding contract-price data to MAPRISE gave us a reason to unpack the difference between "transaction price" and "contract price" in Japanese real estate. On the map, ring-shaped icons and filled-dot icons now tell the two apart at a glance — alongside fine-grained filters for year, price band, and property type.
#Transaction price #Contract price #Data update #UI/UX
- ·4 min readRelease
See what's underground before you build — Borehole logs, now on MAPRISE!
We've added borehole-log data for all seven Kyushu prefectures to MAPRISE. Click one of the orange points on the map and the ground elevation, total drilling depth, groundwater level, survey date, and soil profile pop right up — primary-source information for checking what's beneath a site before you build, lease, or buy.
#Ground #Borehole logs #KuniJiban #Disaster prevention #Data update
- ·5 min readResearch
Is that electricity worth a mountainside? — Mega-solar in the hills, and the cost the map reveals
We added a layer of FIT-certified solar PV facilities — about 68,000 across the seven Kyushu prefectures — to MAPRISE. Overlaying the data on the map made one thing visible: facilities built by clearing forests and cutting into slopes. Reduced water retention, landslide risk, glare for nearby residents. Is renewable energy meant to fight climate change quietly destroying another part of nature? Drawing on issues reported on the ground, this is a warning about siting.
#Mega-solar #Solar PV #Deforestation #Disaster prevention #FIT #Data update
- ·6 min readRelease report
Ramen, gyoza, and the everyday on a map — Introducing the Regional Statistics Heatmap
Drawing on the Family Income and Expenditure Survey and the National Survey of Family Income, Consumption and Wealth, we now let you browse city- and prefecture-level numbers for dining out, beverages, staple foods, and durable-goods ownership as a heatmap on a map of Japan. A release note on the Regional Statistics Heatmap.
#regional-statistics #household-survey #heatmap #statistics #release
- ·4 min readRelease
Phased Migration to a Next-Generation Architecture — Why We're Not Rewriting
MAPRISE is planning a phased migration of its front end toward a more maintainable next-generation architecture. We share the design philosophy behind picking 'phased replacement' over 'rewrite,' and the order in which we'll proceed.
#architecture #design #MAPRISE
- ·6 min readCareer
Why I'm Building MAPRISE Solo — Where We Are, and a Note to the People I'll Build With Next
MAPRISE today runs on one founder plus AI development support. Why we started small, what we believe, and when we'll bring in teammates. A direct note to anyone reading this around our company formation (planned October 2026).
#founder #hiring #SaaS #story #MAPRISE
- ·4 min readEvent
Applied to the Yokatoko Business Plan Contest — A 4-Week Preparation Log
MAPRISE submitted an application to the Yokatoko Business Plan Contest's first-round screening (deadline May 12, 2026). Here's the preparation log and how we used the contest as a forcing function.
#bizcon #startup #yokatoko #fukuoka #MAPRISE
- ·2 min readAnnouncement
Launching the Data Update History page — what to show, at what granularity
We've published a page where visitors can see at any time which datasets MAPRISE has added or refreshed. Here are the design choices behind it.
#release #data-operations #transparency
- ·6 min readResearch
State of GIS Data for Kyushu — An 8-Category Overview of What MAPRISE Integrates
MAPRISE integrates real estate, hazard, demographic, and facility data for all seven Kyushu prefectures into 8 business-oriented categories, with industry knowledge backing the AI chat for legal, geological, and market questions. Here's a business-perspective snapshot of what MAPRISE makes visible as of May 2026, and where we have layers that competitors don't.
#data #kyushu #GIS #real-estate #data-catalog
- ·5 min readTutorial
5 Steps to Cut Property Due Diligence from a Full Day to 3 Hours with MAPRISE
Zoning, hazards, nearby facilities, transaction comparables, and future population forecasts — all on one split-screen with AI. We walk through the five concrete steps that compress a full business day of property DD into three hours.
#DD #real-estate #tutorial #finance #homebuilder
- ·3 min readRelease report
Expanded the seismic simulation to 6 scenarios — Beppu-Haneyama added
The seismic simulation (beta) now covers 6 assumed scenarios (up from 5), adding the Beppu-Haneyama fault zone in Oita. Major intraplate and subduction-type earthquakes across Kyushu are now jointly covered.
#release #seismic #simulation #beta
- ·2 min readAnnouncement
Introducing the MAPRISE Blog — what we plan to write about
Release notes, how-to articles, event participation, industry analysis, hiring updates — we'll be sharing what MAPRISE is working on, continuously.
#blog #announcement
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