Asanobu Kitamoto

Asanobu KITAMOTO earned his Ph.D. in electronic engineering from the University of Tokyo. He is now the Director of the Center for Open Data in the Humanities (CODH), Joint Support-Center for Data Science Research (DS) in the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS). He is also a Professor at the National Institute of Informatics and SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies). He has developed various data-driven science approaches in the humanities, earth sciences, and disaster management. He has released databases and software as open academic research platforms, with a few million users annually from academia and society. He is also working on a trans-disciplinary collaboration to promote open science. He has received awards such as Jury Recommended Works (Art Division) from Japan Media Arts Festival, Yamashita SIG Research Award from the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), Best Paper Award from IPSJ SIG Computers and the Humanities Symposium, Academic Award (Research Paper) from Japan Society for Digital Archive, and Good Design Award.

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I am interested in the "data-driven science" approach to analyzing large-scale data in various academic disciplines to create value. My goal is to discover new knowledge or create new communities by constructing relevant research infrastructure, including large-scale databases with data analysis, search, and visualization algorithms based on visual and spatial information processing technology adapted to the characteristics of target data. For example, I built one of the largest databases about typhoons and meteorological disasters with seamless search and access to heterogeneous and massive data from the past to the present. It has evolved into a popular real-time disaster information service based on big data technology, with over 20 million page views annually. In addition, I have been extending the data-driven science approach to a wide range of disciplines, such as the global environment and humanities domains. From now on, I plan to apply it to research infrastructure for humanities as a part of the Center for Open Data in the Humanities (CODH) activity at the Joint Support-Center for Data Science Research, Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS). This kind of research is related to the "open science" movement, which promotes openness and sharing of scholarly information across disciplines as leverage to transform the style of academic research, so I am also involved in research projects based on trans-disciplinary collaboration.