Case Study: Hokkaido University achieves real-time smart snow removal optimization with SanDisk Fusion ioMemory solutions

Sandisk’s Fusion Iomemory™ Plows The Way For A Field Trial For “Smart” Snow Removal In Sapporo

Hokkaido University’s Meme Media Laboratory developed a cyber-physical system to optimize snow removal in Sapporo, a city with extreme snowfall and huge operational costs. The team needed to ingest and analyze massive, heterogeneous real-time data streams — GPS and speed probes from hundreds of vehicles, radar and weather feeds, subway and historical snow-removal records — but faced I/O bottlenecks that prevented timely analysis and field trials.

The lab deployed MongoDB on HP ProLiant servers accelerated with Fusion ioMemory ioDrive PCIe SSDs to eliminate storage I/O constraints and enable high-speed read/write performance. The solution delivered real-time analytics and fast response at a reasonable cost, made field trials possible, supported expanded sensing (images and 3D lidar) with larger Fusion drives, and laid the groundwork for traffic forecasting and disaster-control applications.

Hokkaido University

Hajime Imura

Assistant Professor, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology Meme Media Laboratory