Concluding Summary and the Remaining Future Directions

This chapter summarizes the results obtained from our research and present the remaining research challenges. We introduced a three-layers structure of Japanese regional IOTs: national IOT, prefectural IOTs, and municipal IOTs. We discussed some issues on the compilation of multi-regional IOTs based on prefectural and municipal IOTs, and we conducted some applications of the multi-regional IOTs for measuring regional interdependency, identifying a metropolitan area, regional impacts of declining population through consumption, regional influences of automobile electrification, and measuring regional contribution of a small and medium-sized enterprise. Despite remaining challenges, we have been able to provide some resolutions to the issues in compiling MRIOTs and some methods to analyze issues on revitalization in a society with a declining population.