“Disease map” is a thematic map describing geographical spread of diseases. Previous studies pointed out the importance of infectious disease information delivery using maps. However, few attempts have been done on the evaluation of the map use in epidemiological surveillance. The aim of this paper is to examine the current condition of utilization of disease maps in health crisis management, focusing on influenza regional surveillance in Japan.

This study analyzed information collected by two methods. First, we carried out a survey of the websites of epidemiological surveillance in Japanese specialized agencies and local governments. We obtained data from 3,649 agencies and local governments, including 81 institutes of health, 551 health centers, 1,040 medical associations, and 1,977 local governments. We examined these websites by checking its quality of information, provisional form, and map usage. Second, we made the interview to the specialized agencies that delivered epidemiological information by with disease maps. Items of the survey are as follows: history of construction and management about surveillance system, user and utilization of regional surveillance, the effect of introduction and relationship with other surveillance, and new developments and future enhancements.

Analysis of the websites revealed that health centers, medical associations and local governments delivered　original information on infectious disease jurisdictional districts. Only 40 specialized agencies and local governments published disease maps on the websites, in which information was easy to understand in real time. In any case utilization of disease maps in regional surveillance has an effect of increasing reliability and speed of information delivery. These maps are browsed widely by not only specialist but also general public. In this way, some agencies built a health crisis management structure in territorial jurisdictions by utilizing the map. Hence, utilization of disease maps in regional surveillance can be useful for riskcommunication as a tool of sharing crisis management information between experts and local residents.

In this paper, we introduce the Postcard Collection stored at the Department of Geography, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, and the web application, which allows users to browse and search the collection through the interactive map. There are about 1,600 postcard collections of historical sites in the early 20th century. These postcards are valuable image materials because they convey nature landscapes, living scenery, and natural disasters at that time.

The Postcard Collection will be released as a web application (http://arcg.is/2itv0q0）through digital photos of postcards provided by the Department of Geography, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University and cloud services provided by Esri Japan to improve the degree of recognition in society. Unique to the web application is that users can search all the postcards interactively using maps, rather than just sorting through digital data and bibliographic information.