Addressing Challenges in Social Infrastructure

Every day, visitors from overseas raise their smartphones to capture images of Japan’s towering cityscape skylines.
Redevelopment is transforming Japan’s cities at a rapid pace, but the country faces serious infrastructure challenges, including natural disasters like earthquakes and floods to road cave-ins caused by aging sewer systems.
Much of Japan’s infrastructure was built during the rapid development of the 1970s and 1980s, and half a century later, it has reached a tipping point. Many structures are deteriorating, and urgent inspection and maintenance are needed against the backdrop of Japan’s shortage of skilled formwork carpenters, essential to concrete construction.
To tackle these major social challenges, a new technology is being developed and deployed: 3D Concrete Printing (3DCP).
This approach adapts 3D printer technology that emerged in the late 2000s, once limited to home devices costing only a few hundred dollars, to concrete construction.
According to Professor Tetsuya Ishida of the University of Tokyo, a specialist in concrete engineering, traditional concrete construction methods date back to the late 18th century.
Concrete, composed of cement, sand, gravel, and water, is not only strong but also relativvely eco-friendly. 3DCP technology aims to revolutionize the use of concrete.

This program highlights members of the national project known as the Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP) collaboration among industry, government, and academia. Major construction firms, startups, and universities are all working together to establish new guidelines for 3DCP technology, even proposing them to the ISO. Their goal is to ensure the sustainability of Japan’s construction sites and infrastructure, and their collaborative efforts, transcending institutional boundaries, have drawn attention from leading researchers around the world.