Abstract
The annual amount of precipitation including snowfall tends to greatly fluctuate probably because of global warming. To minimize the risk of an unexpected increase in snow remocal expenditures due to unusual heavy snowfall, barious budgetary measures including national or prefectural supplementary budgets are prepared. In constrast, for a winter with scant snowfall, measures to minimize snow removal contractors' risk that they cannot gain the expected profit from snow removal work have been largely limited. In addition, some snow removal contract systems have been changed, which has made the contractors' finantial risk greater than before the change. As a result, in Fukushima Prfecture in 2009, no bidder appeared for a snow removal contract. If the no. of snow removal contractors decreases due to the extreme fuluctuations of snowfall, snow removal will not be able to be sufficiently realized in the cold, snow regions that account for about 60% of Japan's land area, and this may make winter living in such regions insecure and unstable. The authors developed a snow removal cost estimation model that uses a linear regression line of “unit cost of snow removal” (UCSR). UCSR decreases with increases in culuative snowfall. Through the model, this study evaluates the contractors' risk in a year with unusually little snowfall and seek how to address the risk.
