RoboCupRescue is an international cooperative research project aiming at proposal of a new paradigm of social infrastructure against emergency disasters as an application of multi-agent technology and robotics. RoboCupRescue Simulation Project considers an artificial disaster society by computer simulation. A distributed simulation method integrates disaster simulators, and in the future, realworld interfaces and human interfaces. Intelligent behavioral agents make disaster response activities in this virtual world with intelligent civilian agents creating a synthetic virtual disaster field. It contributes virtual disaster experience, city planning, realtime disaster response, and standardization of infrastructures. Simulation results and experiments by a prototype system demonstrated its effectiveness in evaluating disaster response strategies.

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Agent-based simulation is one of the potential approaches for understanding complex organizational and social phenomena. However, this approach has a serious problem characterized as a lack of cumulative progress. To tackle this problem, this paper investigates the main causes of the problem and explores some solutions. Through an analysis, the following implications are revealed: (1) cumulative progress in an agent-based approach is promoted by (a) the sharing of common results, (b) the development of standard computational models, (c) the replicating of older works, and/or (d) the creation of standard evaluation criteria; (2) our approach has great potential for promoting cumulative progress in an agent-based approach in terms of achieving the above four points; and (3) the factors found in our approach have the high possibility of being a fundamental process in the real world, supporting the KISS principle, and being utilized as toolkits.

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The background of the research was obtained from a practical system example of decision-making problems. The system can be described a functional part of the car, guiding the driver to the desired destination by the displaying route information. This is called a Car Navigation System. When this is used, the drivers depend on the route plan shown on the display. Based on the input given by the driver, the Car Navigation System shows the most efficient route based on time and distance. Generally, drivers do not drive the most direct route to the final destination point. In other words, usually when driving, even if a driver preplans the route, he will have a desire to make impulsive stops along the way. It can be said that the driver's subjective resource can be changed based on objective conditions. A rich description of this process comes, for example, from research on Trukese navigation the open sea reported by Thomas Gradwin (1964). The aim of the analysis then is to view the systematization decision-making process, including its assimilation, in items of constrains posed by asymmetries in the respective situation resources of subjectivity and objectivity. What is notable about Lucy A, Suchman (1987) account of the resources of the Trukese navigator is that nowhere is a preconceived plan in evidence. The basis for navigation seems to be, instead, local interactions with environment. The question of how a route map is produced for specific purpose, how in any actual instance it is interpreted vis-_-vis the situation, and how its use is resource for traversing the situation, is a reasonable and productive one. In the analysis, it is in the interaction of representation and represented where, the action is. In this decision-making model, the expected utility is derived from two influence degrees in the state space. It is an objective influence weights and a subjective influence weights. The relative criticality of the objective expected utility and subjective expected utility are determined for the final route of the expected utility based on preferred. There are three main results. 1. In the situated actions of the decision-making problem, the probability scale by the Markov property was applied to the evaluation based on the ratio scale constructed by the AHP. 2. The expected utility in each state of the decision making process was assimilated, and it weighed the expected utility of the objective item against the subjective item. 3. In the route path selection, the evaluation was done considering the evaluation based on the objective expected utility and the influence of the state transition between routes to other states Although the system's function (NAVI+) can guide the driver to the desired destination points, but it cannot forecast changes in driving conditions. This will not only be effective in Car Navigation Systems but the Markov property can also be used in other decision-making processes. In the future, there is a prospect for a new function of Car Navigation System based on the situated oriented expansion.

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The 1990s is called "The Decade of the Environment," and has seen a marked increase in the public's concern for environmental issues. The public has been seeking to lessen the environmental impacts of daily activities. The number of "green" consumers, who purchase environmentally less harmful products, is increasing. On the other hand, marketers exhibit great variety in environmental performance. It is reported that information provision strategies, such as environmental labeling like Eco-Label in Japan, and the environmental ISO, play an important role on the pollution control. The disclosure strategies are attempts to increase the availability of information on the environmental burdens to the public. Although those strategies are expected to lead the public into having stronger concern for the environment and altering the behavior for the better, few theoretical and computational studies have so far been made. The purpose of this paper is to show an agent-based simulation method to analyze the roles of information provision strategies on environmentally sound behavior. A new methodology of poly-agent systems that was introduced by Takagi, Kijima and Deguchi (1995) is applied into the economic framework. In poly-agent systems approach, the term of "agent" means autonomous one, which is different from economic unit. The basic concept of the poly-agent systems is as follows. Each agent in a considering system has a subjective internal model. Each agent acts referring its own internal model and the others' and then modifies its activities. The considering system consists of a large number of those different autonomous agents. Poly-agent systems approach studies on the emergency that the interaction of micro autonomous agents causes a macro pattern of the system. In this paper, we argue that some concepts of individual and social learning are important to analyze the role of information provision on the environmentally sound behavior. Those concepts are applied to poly-agent systems and schematized conceptual models are shown. The availability of the method introduced here is discussed, compared with the method of traditional economic models.

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This paper describes the results of the intervention experiment about the coordination in a grocery market store. We use the questionnaire researches to the store workers and delegated the social psychologist as the facilitator who worked with them and tried to improve working atmosphere. Results are as follows: 1) Many store workers underestimated the coworkers' work motivations than their own work motivation. 2) Key parameters to improve atmosphere are the work motivation, communication among store workers, and the leaderships to improve atmosphere. 3) As the direct effect of improving atmosphere is emerged to rise the consumers' unit purchase in a store, the workers in the floor where the consumers' purchase are stable are difficult to recognize the effects.

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The workers should have an equal right with the employer to management. An economic activity is done by uniting the capital and work, according to a theoretical model of economics. In the model, the quantity of capital is denoted by K, the quantity of work is denoted byL, and the output is denoted by Y. Then, the production function is shown by Y=f(K,L). The capital and work show equal-footing contribution to the productive activity. Therefore, the capital and work in enterprise should have equal rights to management of this activity. Recent industrial relations in EU show the expansion of the worker participation in management. Reflecting this circumstances, the current jurisprudential theories in Germany and the others legitimate the joint decision-making by managers and workers on management. Such theories state that the orders of enterprises are the matters which must be decided jointly by managers and workers. "Both the right of command exercised by managers and the management right should not be manager's one-sided rights. These rights should be based on the mutual agreement by managers and workers." This view is becoming the main tendency of new opinions in the labor law jurists in Japan. It is necessary for new Japanese type management in the 21st century to take and encourage the style of stake-holder firms which stand in the equal rights between employers and workers.

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Restructuring welfare society is important problem in our society. In this paper, we show 5-types of social system approach to explain the structure of our welfare society. This approach is based on welfare pluralism and Yasuo Sakamoto's meta-typology. By adapting our approach to social security institution of 6 country, we try to explain the standpoint of social system approach to welfare society. If we take Og-type system which characterized inter-generational redistribution principle, our society must have schemes that ensure the population balance, like childcare, child benefit and so on. The functional disease of social systems is leaded from a lack of such schemes. Hence, we need to design our welfare society considering sustainability, consistency of mutual-effect and the situation of social environment.

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To solve the location problem of a dumping-ground to solution, the government has prepared the legal base that the public sector is going on a plan to construct institutions. Because we need to remove rationally suspicion that local residents are holding about the institution or the enterprise to come to make an agreement with. The dumping-ground has had various influences on the environment of a community. So we expect strongly that the public sector participate in managing an institution. However, the merit does not work efficiently in fact. On the other hand, although it is said that a reaction of local residents to an institution plan is Not-In-My-Backyard preferences, they do not resist their duty completely. Why does the new point at issue about public responsibility arise? This paper summarized the circumstances and the problem of a policy first. Secondly, it takes up two examples in Nagano Prefecture. And this study analyzes how administration would have committed the scene where an environmental control system intervenes in a social control system. The case of the Achi-mura is one of examples. I find that this local government tired to gather information about opinions, to reduce fears about pollution. However, use of the social environmental impact assessment procedure cannot resolve the issue, so disposal problems will continue. Consequently, this paper will show that the reason a practical capability for solving a problem is not heightened by the policy of locating a dumping-ground in a social control system. That is the attitude of the public sector, which is going to cancel the conflict produced when an environmental control system intervenes in the sectionalism of bureaucracy.

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The purpose of this article is to consider the theory of consumer society mainly constructed by Baudrillard in the view of innovation studies begun by Schumpeter. Though Marx thought capitalism could never survive because of oversupply and class struggle, capitalism in advanced countries in fact has been going on since the end of the World War II. Baudrillardian semiotic social theories have tried to account for how and why it has. But their explanations made a mistake in the light of innovation. According to them it is because consumer goods as signs differentiate in the semiotic sense that capitalism in advanced countries has survived. But it is necessary not to differentiate goods but to innovate effectively processes of production and distribution in order that capitalism can go on.

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The neoclassical theories as a contemporary mainstream economics analyze how individuals and firms should maximize their objects under perfect information and knowledge, and derive demand and supply functions by means of aggregating their behaviors. And market mechanisms clear so that economy is in equilibrium at all times according to the neoclassical. The equilibrium state does not change as long as external conditions of the economy do not change such as technological innovations and consumer's preferences. The neoclassical theories describe markets system with simultaneous equations on the assumption of individuals' perfect rationality, which is, however, itself a fiction. The figures of market economy depicted by the neoclassical are quite different from dynamic movement of the actual market economies. The economics of complexity against the neoclassical, is trying to grasp a market economy as a self-organizing system consists of many agents, whose local behaviors form a network of face-to-face transactions as a whole. It is the purpose of our paper to analyze the formation of markets systems themselves from the point of view of the self-organizing theory. Shiozawa's arguments on the market system as a self-organizing system are briefly examined in the section two. It is important to understand the formation of market itself in order to grasp nature of market systems. An automata network theory we depend on here is explained in the section three and structures of our agents-based-model in the section four. The result of our computer simulation on market formation processes with our simulation model is summarized in the section five and six. See [Asari,Mado,2001] about model building and simulation programs in detail. One implication of the result is the following. The transaction is the most efficient way in comparison with other ways like plunders in order to obtain something necessary for a community to sustain itself. Formation of markets system is brought about through processes of specialization of economic functions and division of labors. Formation of market is symbolized with formation of merchants' network. Needless to say, money plays essential rolls in any market systems. In our model money does not appear explicitly, but the formation of merchants' network could represent the rolls of money in the market system.

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This study focuses on IT-based administrative activities: the present situation, web accessibility verification of administrative web sites, and proposals for future implementation of a barrier-free information society. The present situation and new trends in the use of IT - mainly Internet technologies, in both central and local administrative activities in Japan - is reviewed. The policy of the promoton of a barrier-free information society is reviewed with reference to the concept "web accessibility." A web accessibility test of 47 web sites of Japanese prefectural governments was conducted in order to determine to what extent they are open to different audiences and web access environments. The results show that none of the sites has perfect accessibility: none of them are fully compliant with HTML standards, and 37 of them may be inaccessible to certain audiences, including the visually impaired. The limitations and defects of the test conducted are also examined. The author points out the possibility of low recognition of the web accessibility concept among the persons concerned, both web developers and administrative officers. The invisiblity of web accessibility issues is also examined with reference to latent defects in web authoring. It is pointed out that we need to be aware that IT and its derivative cyberspace are never perfect nor universal. It is also suggested that the existence of the "information-poor" in cyberspace requires a greater awareness of accessibility issues.

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In order to overcome a big change of society, such as rapid development of information communication technology, even if it becomes a member of society, daily study, i.e., lifelong learning, is required. In aging society, to deepen culture or to master knowledge required for a new occupation, and technology, lifelong learning is much more needed. In our country, the social environment where it is suitable for lifelong learning is not ready now. Then, in order to improve immediately the environment which supports lifelong learning, one model using the information communication network which used the university as the center was proposed. Especially this system considers employing human's capability as advisers in questions and answers efficiently directly as much as possible. Advisers are classified into 3 levels of an upper level, a middle-class level, and a beginners' class level which are based on the question level corresponding self-assessment of learners. They are recruited from teachers of the university and people of learning and experience also from outside the university. Learners shall pay the charge of attendance and the university shall pay the charge of advices to advisers. Advisers are collected by the special field of study, and in order to enable access which questions do not concentrate on a specific adviser from learners, if the proposed system has access from a learner, the system has the function which selects the adviser of a question field with equalized load automatically. This paper shows that the proposed system can realize few burdens of advisers as a result of equalization of load, and nearly real time questions and answers with comparatively little waiting time.

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Technological progress appears to be driven by a few great technologies opening up new technological opportunities. These technologies are called 'general purpose technologies' (GPT's). GPT's can be defined by their ability to inspire technological innovations. So any GPT which loses this ability has to step down from its position as one of GPT's. In this paper we discuss social properties of GPT's. We first criticize some economic growth models based on GPT's. Secondly we focus our attention to the case of semiconductor technology, which is an example of GPT. The development of the integrated circuits, especially microprocessors, changed a character of GPT concerned. The role of semiconductor technology as GTP has been replaced by computer technology. In this stage of GTP, direct interactions between user sectors are more important than indirect feedback mediated by GTP sector.

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