Japan’s infrastructure ministry is developing a system that combines administrative information held by local governments to detect vacant houses using artificial intelligence.
Based on information such as water usage, basic resident registers and real estate registries, the system uses AI to calculate the probability that a building is unoccupied. For example, if the building is an old wooden house with very low water use and only one elderly resident registered, the system displays a high probability that the house is unoccupied.
As some vacant houses are difficult to identify from the exterior alone, the aim of the new system is to detect them at an early stage and make them available for sale or rent, or demolish them before they collapse.
