Lead developer Yusuke Fukazawa is an associate professor of applied machine learning at Sophia University who enjoys orienteering and hiking and hopes his studies will help to create an application that makes such outdoor pursuits safer.
He points out, however, that encounters between bears and humans are increasingly occurring in urban areas across Japan.
“I have focused my research on Akita prefecture and it was clear that there was a surge in bear encounters in 2023, rising to 3,910 incidents from just 800 cases the year before,” Fukazawa said.
Those encounters led to a number of people sustaining injuries, with 193 bear attacks across the country over the course of 2023 leaving 212 people injured and six fatalities.
“In previous years in Akita, there were very few human-bear encounters in urban areas, but that changed in 2023,” he told This Week in Asia.
