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1IntroductionAround one week immediately aer a disaster is cru-cially important in a wide-scale disaster, like the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake in Japan, in order to hold the dam-age to the minimum. To address disaster countermeasures promptly during this period, it is advisable to collect in-formation regarding the disaster as rapidly as possible and to share the information among authorities concerned. A premise for that is a communication network.When the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake occurred, the disaster-response agencies, such as re departments, the police and the Japan Self-Defense Forces, were dis-patched to the disaster area, the Tohoku region, from around Japan to conduct rescue activities. But the com-munication infrastructure, such as mobile-phone base stations, fell victim to the tsunami, and information-sharing among the authorities concerned caused troubles [1]. For this reason, the space communication network group of NICT (at that time) was dispatched to a disaster area to-gether with the Tokyo Fire Department, and provided a communication network using the Wideband Internetworking Engineering Test and Demonstration Satellite (hereinaer called WINDS) [2]. However, in the coast areas, as congestion of the communication network arose in addition to physical damage by the tsunami, com-munication was dicult with teams in motion, and prompt countermeasures and an action policy could not be con-veyed well. From this experience, the necessity to develop satellite communication earth stations that can communi-cate in motion was highlighted.Accordingly, to avoid a communication blackout in a time of disaster, NICT has developed a fully automatic earth station which does not require a professional engi-neer, and a mobile vehicle station by which that the emergency response organization itself can collect and transmit the latest damage situation in real time while moving. Furthermore, NICT has repeated empirical test-ing, such as providing added functions, for example, a road step system, necessary for disaster countermeasures for the mobile vehicle station while acquiring emergency response agencies’ cooperation, such as municipalities and re de-partments. When the Kumamoto earthquakes occurred in 2016, NICT sent the mobile vehicle stations to Takamori Town, Kumamoto Prefecture, built an emergency network and provided an internet satellite line through the Kashima Space Technology Center.In this paper, we introduce the earth stations which were developed aiming for satellite communications avail-able for disaster countermeasures aer the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the content of the empirical testing, and the emergency network building and operation for the Kumamoto earthquakes in 2016 (hereinaer called the “2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes”).2Developing the mobile vehicle earth station and fully automatic earth stationBased on the experience of the 2011 Great East Japan 3-3 Development and Demonstration Experiments on Satellite Communication Effective for Disaster CountermeasuresByeong-pyo JEONG, Hajime SUSUKITA, Tomoshige KAN, Toshio ASAI, Akira AKAISHI, Kazuyoshi KAWASAKI, and Takashi TAKAHASHISince the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, NICT has been working on the research and development of network technology that is less likely to be cut off during a large-scale disaster as well as network technology that can be restored quickly in case of disconnection. This paper presents the research and development of satellite communications effective during a disaster and its demonstration experiments while focusing on WINDS, followed by the construction of emergency networks and such that were conducted during the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquakes.873 Ultra-High-Speed Satellite Communication Technology