Dr. Yuta Hashimoto from National Museum of Japanese History

The instrumental observation of earthquakes in Japan began only after the end of the nineteenth century, hence transcribing the pre-modern earthquake records is crucial for the earthquake prediction and disaster prevention. The Historical Earthquake Study Group (HESG) at Kyoto University, of which Dr. Hashimoto is a member, uses crowdsourcing to transcribe vast numbers of historical earthquake records. In 2017, the HESG launched Minna de Honkoku (https://honkoku.org/), inviting the general public to transcribe historical earthquake records via the Internet. This project also makes use of novel technologies such as the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and AI-based handwriting recognition (HWR).