The Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which has been introduced in Japan since the late 1990s, is used in various situations in society. It has become an indispensable information infrastructure for our daily lives and services. In this paper, after the basic description about the technical aspect related to GIS and the geospatial information as data, I will introduce the institutional position in Japan. Furthermore, it takes the keyword of participation as utilization of GIS in today's data society, and we will look at the usage of geospatial information that will be accumulated enormously in the future.

Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) provides various types of geospatial data including topographic maps, aerial photographs and disaster information. GSI operates “GSI Maps” (https://maps.gsi.go.jp/) which is a web map providing geospatial data mainly related to administrative works, especially disaster preventions. GSI Maps also has tools to analyze the geospatial information. In this paper, we introduce the features, functions and example of utilization of GSI Maps. We also show operation procedures. In addition, we introduce “GSI Tiles” which are geospatial data used in GSI Maps, and also can be used in systems and applications other than GSI Maps.

OpenStreetMap is a mapping project to make open geographical data of whole earth. It is a platform for everyone to edit and distribute their geospatial dataset under Open license. OpenStreetMap is growing continuously with the communities of mapping contributors on the globe. This paper is trying to describe it by several aspects such as community clusters, organizations and activity of various side.

In order to promote the use of statistical data and respond to sophisticated and diverse analysis needs of society, a highly convenient infrastructure is needed. In addition to providing it as open data, it is necessary to visualize and capture features, trends, etc. for problem solution. Graphing statistical data on a map, aggregating statistical data, etc, Introduce “Area data analysis system (jSTAT MAP)” used as a regional analysis tool.

To provide easy access to information on past natural disasters, we have developed a Web-based application that provides a Disaster Chronology Map. It includes approximately 60,000 natural disasters that have occurred in Japan over the past 1600 years, from the beginning of recorded history, and displays disasters by year of occurrence. The application uses the natural disasters database that is maintained by the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience. To provide brief outlines of natural disasters, the database was created by extracting data on past disasters from regional disaster prevention plans throughout Japan, and the data is stored as geographical information system (GIS) data. Mashups can be created by combining the map and other applications using an application programming interface (API). We hope that our Disaster Chronology Map will enable easy access to materials containing information about natural disasters and a better understanding of the disasters occurring in each region, and assist with disaster prevention and management.