From transportation to holiday homes, the "sharing economy" is gaining traction worldwide, and in typhoon- and earthquake-prone Japan the concept is increasingly seen as instrumental to disaster management.
On Monday this year's Share Summit, one of the largest public-private conferences in Japan on the burgeoning sector, featured 11 panel discussions on hot topics including the role of sharing services in disaster in the nation, which has been struck by multiple powerful typhoons this year alone.
Takuya Hirai, former minister in charge of information technology policies and currently chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party's special committee on advancing digital society, said during the discussion that the potential of the sharing economy when coping with disasters is "tremendous."