OREANDA-NEWS. February 24, 2012. NTT DOCOMO, INC., Japan’s leading mobile operator and provider of integrated services centered on mobility, announced today it will link its Disaster Message Board service to Google Person Finder and will also link its dmenu™ and i-menu services to various Twitter accounts as part of an initiative to use new information-communication technologies (ICT) for emergency communication systems that will help people to establish contact and stay informed during major disasters in Japan. The initiatives are two of the latest disaster-preparedness measures that DOCOMO has been introducing following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011.

DOCOMO will link its Disaster Message Board service, which enables people in a disaster area to use their mobile devices to post messages that others worldwide can view to confirm their whereabouts and safety, and Person Finder, a web-based application that allows individuals to check and post on the status of relatives or friends affected by a disaster while also providing a common back-end to share and store data. DOCOMO users will be able to view the data stored to Person Finder and messages via the Disaster Message Board screen on their mobile devices. The service is expected to be operative by the end of March. DOCOMO plans to expand the availability of this emergency service in cooperation with NTT Group companies, as well as other carriers that provide emergency message board services.

In collaboration with Twitter, the top page of DOCOMO’s dmenu™ portal site for smartphones and i-menu portal site for i-mode-compatible phones will display links to Twitter accounts administered by national and local governments, utilities, infrastructure-related companies, mass media, etc. from February.

Both services will be made available if a major disaster occurs in Japan.