Is it true that the Japanese government is using smart city targets to plan the location of where forest fires will occur? No, that's not true: According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism, one of the preventive measures in the blueprint of the proposed smart cities, is to ensure that forest fires don't happen.
The claim appeared on TikTok (archived here) on August 23, 2023. The caption reads:
Targets of forest fires: Smart cities. Is your town safe?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Wed Sep 6 02:15:35 2023 UTC)
The claim is deceptive since the map does not depict possible fire targets. Instead, the image featured in the post originates from a 2019 blueprint of smart cities created by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation, and Tourism. The map shows the locations of preliminary project models for smart cities and projects with a high priority for commercialization. The entire document provides a quick snapshot of smart cities across Japan, including Sapporo, Tsukuba, Utsunomiya, and more.
There is no evidence that the government is using smart cities as a way to plan and target forest fires. In fact, the Tokyo Fire Department has released a document that details plans and safety measures for the aging populations to adapt to smart cities without causing fires or other common mishaps. The Government of Osaka also details an ICT fire prevention system in their smart city that links fire alerts directly from the Japan Meteorological Agency to citizens' phones. The City of Ube is also prioritizing smart disaster prevention, with representative Hideharu Hironaka detailing that Ube's smart cities should prioritize accurate weather reports and hopes to reach a point where disasters can be predicted early.
