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TOKYO — A Japanese government big-data analysis system on Friday started churning out data on the movements of foreign tourists, a tool designed to help local governments better promote tourism.

The information covers roughly 500,000 people who visited Japan between January and June of last year, made possible by using location data gathered by NTT Docomo for tourists that used international roaming services in Japan during that period.

The government is providing the new data through an upgrade to the Regional Economy and Society Analyzing System, or RESAS, which was developed to provide useful information on the economy, society and business to local governments to assist them in developing effective economic and industrial policies.

For instance, visitors to the RESAS website can view the locations of the roughly 5 million businesses whose contact details were listed in the 2011-2015 editions of phone books on a digital map along with their basic information. By using the system, users can see concentrations of businesses in a particular area, as well as changes over time.

The system also provides detailed economic, industrial and other data for the entire nation, including financial information on one million small businesses from 2005 to 2014.

This article was originally published on asia.nikkei.com and can be viewed in full here

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