About Kumamap

August 2025: a hiker encountered a brown bear on Mount Rausu, Hokkaido.

This incident prompted an investigation into bear incident data across Japan, revealing a critical problem: 30+ prefecture governments track incidents independently—different websites, all Japanese-only, incompatible formats.

For hikers planning routes through the Japanese Alps, this creates a serious challenge. Trails cross multiple prefectures, but bears don't respect administrative boundaries. A bear incident 2km from your hiking trail might be reported in a different jurisdiction's system—invisible to anyone who doesn't know exactly where to look.

Kumamap was built to solve this problem.

Each prefecture publishes bear incident data in its own way: Google Maps pins, PDFs, Excel files, custom APIs. The formats are chaotic. For international hikers, this data is effectively invisible.

The data exists. But it's scattered across 30+ different websites, all in Japanese, with no unified way to view it.

Kumamap centralizes 75,000+ incidents from all prefectures with translation and unified mapping.

Data Pipeline: Custom Python scrapers built for each prefecture. Automated collection runs twice daily via GitHub Actions. Data is extracted, translated to English using GPT-4, reverse geocoded for coordinates, and stored in Firebase.

Distance-Based Matching: Prefecture boundaries don't work for hikers. Kumamap matches incidents to 400+ areas (hiking trails, cities, tourist spots) by distance: 12km radius for trails, 18km for tourist spots, 25km for cities. Search Mount Fuji and see all incidents within hiking distance, regardless of prefecture.

Community Reporting: Anyone can report incidents. Click the map, drop a pin, upload photos, submit. No account required. Reports go live immediately with no moderation. Rate limited to 5 per hour per IP.

Kumamap started with bear incidents, but the vision is bigger: a comprehensive, multilingual hiking safety platform for Japan.

Future features: Real-time trail conditions and closures, wildlife activity patterns across seasons, weather integration for mountain routes, trailhead access and transportation, multi-hazard awareness (landslides, floods, snow conditions), and community-verified trail reports.

The goal is to make Japan's mountains accessible and safe for both domestic and international hikers through centralized, translated, real-time data.

Data Sources: Official reports from prefectural environmental conservation departments across Japan. Automated scraping updates twice daily (6 AM and 6 PM JST).

Community Reports: Anonymous submissions from local residents and hikers. Published immediately with no moderation. Rate limited to 5 per hour per IP address.

Privacy: No personal information is collected. All reports are anonymous, with only location data made public. All data is encrypted and stored in a secure environment with industry-standard security measures.