In recent years, when a major typhoon approaches and makes landfall, in order to maintain passenger safety, many Japanese railway companies conduct planned service suspension after scheduling the suspension of every train operating on lines in a wide area before the typhoon hits and after providing information to passengers, in the event where trains possibly have to stop between stations for a long period of time, or when trains must stop operating before arriving at their final destination. In this paper, we have provided a summary of disaster reduction activities for railways against disasters caused by heavy rainfall and strong winds, and the circumstance, significance, and important points of “planned service suspension” of railways as a new and rapidly expanding method for disaster reduction in recent years based on “Guidelines for Conducting Planned Service Suspension of Railways”, edited by the Railway Bureau at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT).

In response to the recent growing number of natural disasters and damage to airports, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) in Japan established a committee for developing large-scale natural disaster countermeasures for airports in October 2018. The committee has published a report that proposes several new concepts and countermeasures for disaster risk management at airports with a focus on "Centralized disaster management". A guideline for developing airport Business Continuity Planning (BCP) has also been published. This paper looks back on the history of the efforts made to develop airports that are resilient to natural disasters, and introduces a summary of the report and guideline recently published by MLIT.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. Federal Flood Control Act was characterized by a low budget levee only policy and prioritized the economic development of river basins. However, the validity of levee only projects was denied at the time of the Great Mississippi River Flood in 1927, and the comprehensive river project was considered to play an important role in flood control. As the federal fiscal burden increased due to large-scale federal river improvements, there was a demand to raise local cost contribution in order to reduce inefficient public works. As a result, federal and local cost-sharing was influenced by political dealings, economic conditions, and the conflict over authority between government agencies. During the postwar period, a uniform cost-sharing bill was submitted to Congress in order to modify the inconsistent cost-sharing system. A fixed burden ratio came to be defined in the Water Resources Development Act of 1986.

The estimated tsunami flood area along coastal regions was revised following the establishment of the Law on Making Local Areas Resistant to Tsunami based on the lessons learned from the Tohoku earthquake. Regional towns and cities that face the ocean throughout the whole of Japan are now required to conduct urban planning based on tsunami disaster risk, in addition to the previous challenges of population decline and population aging. This paper initially outlines the legal system and example cases of development plans that respond to the new tsunami disaster risk. The paper then formulates a hypothesis that citizens, who select where they live with awareness of the tsunami disaster risk within cities where most of the city center is estimated to be the tsunami flood area, tend to live in locations that are less convenient in terms of transportation than their previous home. An attempt is made to verify this claim. After conducting a survey in Kochi City and analyzing the obtained data, the results were shown to support this hypothesis. The government needs to not only provide risk information but should also develop planned infrastructure for disaster mitigation.

On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. This was truly an unprecedented disaster, and the author and his colleagues were involved in the development of a communication-type car navigation system started in 2003. The probe data from this system is used to generate information on road traffic in the area affected by the earthquake, which is extremely important for lifelines. The morning after the earthquake, this information was released to the public. The information was used to support the relief efforts of people heading to the affected areas. On the other hand, as disasters have become more frequent in recent years, current disaster information has been mainly provided at the municipal level. This causes a lack of disaster prevention information that is useful for people to travel to their destinations. In this paper, we will discuss practical applications of disaster prevention and disaster mitigation information using mobility data, and how these can be used in the era of automated driving and in the future. We will also report our efforts to look at smart cities.

Super typhoons, which hit both Osaka Bay and Tokyo Bay in 2018 and 2019 respectively, brought about significantly high tides, tidal waves and fierce winds resulting in damage to the ports in these areas. This paper reviews the level of achievement for port business continuity plans (BCP) that were established due to the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. It also discusses the direction of improvement for BCP currently being conducted as lessons learnt from these typhoon disasters.

The present study focused on the relationship between the driving performance of older drivers at stop-controlled intersections on a driving school course and on roads in real traffic. Older drivers answered several questionnaires and drove on a driving school course. Their driving performance was evaluated by qualified driving instructors and assessed using a dash cam with cameras. After this assessment, the same type of dash cam was attached on their own private car to enable their driving behavior to be recorded and analyzed in real traffic. There was significant correlation for driving performance for both types of evaluation (the driving instructors’ evaluation and assessment with dash cams) between a driving school course and on roads in real traffic targeting stop-controlled intersections. The conclusion is that evaluation conducted on a driving school course at stop-controlled intersection by driving instructors and with dash cams could reasonably predict the driving performance of older drivers in real traffic.

This is a fundamental study on the ‘Link and Place’ theory, which establishes ‘place’ functions on streets. We conducted literature reviews, interviews, and case studies on the actual application of this theory to international street space reallocation practices and the state of progress for this theory. Upon interpreting the demand for this place function, while classifying potential demand and actual demand, we analyzed these demand classifications and indicated a policy to improve the theory for application to street traffic management practices in Japan. In specific terms, we proposed that transport hubs receive weighting when estimating potential demand and that the probability of people staying in a location be used as an indicator of actual demand in residential areas.