Hometown tax allows taxpayers to donate to any municipality of their choices. In return, the taxpayer receives local gifts from the municipality to which the donation was made (i.e., except for the municipality where the taxpayer resides) and tax breaks. In recent years, the competition among local governments to attract donations has become increasingly fierce. In this paper, the efficiencies of all effective municipalities in Japan, local collaborative manufacturers and local gifts in K City are analyzed by data envelopment analysis (DEA). Based on the efficiencies and improvement values, we will answer two questions that concern K City: (1) What is the strength of K City to attract the payment of hometown tax? (2) How can the lineup of gifts be modified to enhance the city's competitiveness? We first compare the efficiencies, input, and output values of other municipalities with K City to find its strength, weakness, and reference set. Then modification proposals regarding the gift lineup are made by cross analysis on the efficiencies of local collaborative manufacturers and local gifts.

We proposed a traffic flow simulation model using the cellular automata method to investigate reducing the environmental load along the roads in the coastal area of Kawasaki City. Specifically, if multiple travel routes are available from a given starting point to a destination, we search for a route that is economically advantageous, i.e., one that reduces the load on the atmospheric environment while also shortening the travel time required. The intention is to improve the roadside environment by suppressing the traffic volume and encouraging vehicles that produce larger quantities of exhaust fumes, such as large diesel vehicles, to choose routes that would balance their distribution within the area. Via numerical experiments, we verified to what extent NOx emissions are affected by changes in the mixing ratio of large vehicles to regular vehicles and the number of switched routes.

In recent years, the volume of air traffic has been increasing due to growing air travel demand. On the other hand, due to the lack of capacity of airports and air routes, efficient processing and smooth operation of aircraft fleets are restricted at congested airports in the air network, resulting in increased delays. This is a social loss. However, limited approaches in prior research have not always been successful in practice. Therefore, improving the performance of the entire aviation network is a social issue.

In this research, I focused on using the behavior actions of an aircraft group that repeated a series of arrivals, stays, and departures, with the aim of improving throughput by adjusting behavior actions. The local ground taxing was compared with the overall delay in the example, and it was confirmed that adjusting the delay itself was effective as a concrete measure for improving throughput in the operations. I also confirmed the balance of throughput and delay respectively in the turnaround.

Tactile inspection, which is part of the appearance inspection, involves touching a target object to detect defects in appearance, such as unevenness of the product surface, irregular steps between parts, and distortion of the product shape. Herein, this inspection is assumed to discriminate the step height. This study clarifies how inspectors' discrimination accuracy for step heights is affected by the step height set in quality standards and the step height generated on the product. The subjects were 10 healthy males, and they discriminated whether the step height of a sample is “higher than,” “lower than,” or “the same as” a reference step height. Discrimination ability was evaluated using the indices of the correct-answer rate and the vertical control force that the subjects applied to the step. The results clarified that misjudgment occurred by recalling the memorized reference height as being higher than the actual height. Additionally, control force had almost no effect. From these results, it is suggested that the risk of outflow of defective products due to the type-II error may differ depending on whether or not the criteria for defective products includes the standard value of the step height.

Train operation restriction is issued when natural hazard such as heavy rain, strong wind or large earthquake occurs, in order to ensure safety. During the restricted operation, trains have to be stopped or slowed down. In this case, railway traffic controllers, who are responsible for operation restriction, respond to the situation while demonstrating their competencies. Understanding whether controllers have these competencies is expected to bring practical benefits such as contributing to improve safety in train operation management. However there is not an established way to evaluate their competencies.

In this paper, we developed a method for an inexperienced evaluator to evaluate controllers' competencies, while referring precedents of other industries, and evaluated competencies of J Company's controllers with this method. As a result, practical effects and subjects of this method were found.

In this paper, we add an affinity evaluation term between nurses into our NSP system. We exhibit that optimization is effective for affinity and load balancing in our NSP system, and also show that these two have a trade off relationship.

This study derived the sensory evaluation experiment of Mango fruit grown on Miyako-jima, in order to confirm the effectiveness of hot-springs water to process mango. Moreover, to understand the benefits of the processed mango grown on Miyako-jima, we analyzed the sensory evaluation data considering the diversity of the consumer values of testees.