The primary mitigation measure for tsunamis is to develop effective warning system and evacuation strategies. As for a tool to optimize the warning system and evacuation, an integrated simulator was developed; the simulator combines hydrodynamic simulation of tsunami with warning and human-response simulations for evacuation. Furthermore, because of its visual GIS presentation, the simulator is used to educate the general public; in some sense, the simulator can be considered as a dynamic hazard map. As for test case, we applied the simulator to Owase City. Effectiveness of the existing warning system and the resulting residents' evacuation were examined by running the simulator with several possible scenarios.

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This paper analyzes the resource allocation of a household with a husband, a wife and a child for non-work activity. A household utility function is defined based on the group utility function, which consists of partial utilities of household members. The allocation of time and expenditure to discretional non-work activities is formulated as maximization of the household utility function with time and budget constraints. The empirical data is collected by an original activity diary survey in Tokyo and Toyama City. A non-linear Tobit model is estimated by maximization of likelihood function. The estimated results show several characteristics of joint decision-making of households in two cities.

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In the field of traffic engineering, video image analysis is an essential technique for correct understanding of traffic phenomena and has been often used for many purposes. However, manual use of this type of technique is a very labor-intensive work. In this study, a multi-functional video image processing system is developed, which can 1) count traffic volumes, 2) track moving objects such as vehicles and pedestrians, and 3) recognize license plates automatically by using image processing technology. Case studies are carried out by applying this system to the actual road traffic, and its performance and accuracy are evaluated. In conclusion, the developed system showed sufficiently satisfactory performance for practical use.

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Assessment of public interests with appropriate scoping is necessary for infrastructure planning. Here, public interests should be examined considering the difference in values among stakeholders. This study proposes a multi-dimensional evaluation system of infrastructure development focusing on concurrence of common interests. The effectiveness of development is measured by a change in QoL level which is defined as an overall satisfaction of five essential elements; safety, economic opportunity, environmental benignity, etc. It is demonstrated that our QoL-based evaluation system contributes to the enhancement of accountability of decision making and ensuring social equality in regeneration of port areas vulnerable to flood-tide disasters.

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In this paper, through a state-of-the-art review on public accountability, the structure and function of the accountability systems is investigated to understand how the accountability enhance the governance of principal-agent relationships underlying the planning processes. The structure of accountability systems is composed by structure of significance, of legitimation and of domination. The structure of legitimation is characterized by pragmatic legitimacy, moral legitimacy an cognitive legitimacy. The cognitive legitimacy, among others, is strongly requested to be established in the planning process where many stakeholders with different interests are involved. The paper presents the research and practical issues that is investigated to establish the well-governed accountability in the planning processes.

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The purpose of this paper is to propose a model, which can be used for allocation planning of undesirable facilities by analysing citizen's awareness. In order to obtain data for this analysis, a questionnaire survey was carried out in ChengDu city in China. From the survey, we grasped people's endurance distance for the undesirable facilities. Based on the data, we could estimate parameters for the model of citizen's endurance rate. As the endurance distance is regarded as a variable, the relation between the distance from the residential location to the waste facility and citizen's endurance rate is a problem of probability and statistics. The stochastic method is used for the modelling approach.

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In this paper, it was recognized that a regional-social climate was important for civil engineering. With this recognition, “a regional-social climate, an anthropological discussion” by Watsuji was criticized in order to find implications for civil engineering. It was discussed that Watsuji's ontology implies that civil engineering influences the existence of human being as well as regional society. It was also discussed that philosophical discussions by Watsuji could not logically distinguish between just and unjust regional-social climates. This is a practical obstacle that prevents civil engineers form applying Watsuji's philosophical discussion to public works. Finally, it was discussed that the modern conservatism would be helpful for overcoming the practical problem of Watsuji's philosophical discussion.

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This paper is concerned with decision making processes where a government provides individuals with information on a public project, observes the individuals' voices to evaluates the social welfare driven by the project, and decides whether or not to carry out the project. In this context, the government is faced with a trade-off with regard to the accuracy of project information she provides: the government is required to provide the individuals more precise information to gather more informed voices on the project, while providing project information in detail might cause the individual's opportunistic behavior. In this paper, a communication game is presented to examine how the individuals are induced to adopt the opportunistic behavior. Furthermore, alternative institutional designs are introduced to improve the information transmission capabilities between the government and individual around the project.

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To enhance the flexibility of the "Cell based Distributed Rainfall-runoff Model Ver.3.0 (cdrmv3.0)", it is essential to verify how spatial information integrated into this model affects the accuracy of hydrologic analysis and also to develop the determination method for analytical parameters, such as physical properties of forestal soil and land use information derived from satellite analysis.
In this study, two spatial resolution models (with 50m for Landsat / ETM+ data set and 250m for Terra / MODIS data set) were applied for the flood runoff analysis at the Karikawa basin, Kanagawa Prefecture. We assess that the analytical method using two spatial models can improve the forecast accuracy of peak discharge as compared with previous ones. The following results were obtained: 1) Two satellite data set used in this study are the most suitable tools to have a timely grasp of various spatial information which can control the accuracy of flood forecasting, 2) Compute loading on 250m mesh model was noticeably lighter than 50m model, 3) The advantage of time resolution of Terra / MODIS data can derive the land cover change frequently, and also this advantage can be applied timely for simulation of the change of flood runoff pattern caused by forest fires or other natural disasters.

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In this paper, we formulate the PFI project contract scheme as an incomplete contract model to investigate the impacts of project cost risks upon social and financial efficiency of the projects, whereby the main focus is upon asset substitution and project liquidation of PFI projects caused by the limited liability and incompleteness in debt contract. The basic model is extended in a way that the service fee is endogenously determined by the tender mechanism. Furthermore, the paper is concluded by the remark that the social and financial efficiency is simultaneously attained when the government keeps the relevant guarantee from the SPC in advance.

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A barrier-free environment in public facilities is being promoted by enforcing the “Transportation Accessibility Improvement Law” and “Accessible and Usable Building Law”. As a result, it has recently become necessary to quantify physical strain during utilization of public facilities, in order to evaluate the appropriate level of barrier free environment in public facilities. The present study, therefore, measured oxygen uptake, as an index of physical strain, during wheelchair and walking locomotion, on a treadmill that can simulate slopes. Oxygen demand against a given distance locomotion increased exponentially with the gradient at an uphill slope. Based on the combination of physical strain during wheelchair locomotion and distance, a slope of 4.0% and below should be recommended as the standard slope gradient. In addition, this study proposed a model for calculating wheelchair strain based on the relationship between the gradient of slope and oxygen demand.

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Public Involvement(PI) has been recognized as important method in the process of road planning and the number of cases of PI have been increasing. This paper analyzes the relationship between the level of citizen participation, the degree of citizen's satisfaction with PI, and the degree of recognition of the plan, by using a citizen survey. Secondly, we try to grasp the factors which decides the level of citizen participation, which influences the level of satisfaction of citizen with the plan. Finally, this paper aims to clarify the important points when using PI method in the process of planning. The important points are as follows: 1)grasping the characteristic of people who were involved in the PI 2)securing adequacy of process 3)establishing reliable relationship with citizen 4)offering information timely and adequately 5)adopting variety of methods of communication.

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This paper describes the trust formation processes between a government and an individual around infrastructure management as a trust game which regards the government and individual as a trustee and truster, respectively. Furthermore, the alternative institutional designs for the third party reviews, i.e., 1) a single reviewer, 2) a homogenous panel, 3) a heterogeneous panel, 4) a heterogeneous panel with interpreters, are presented. Especially, an optimal composition of reviewers in the third party is examined for the mechanism of checks and balances among the members to be worked well. Finally, from the model analysis, political implications for realizing the trust formation between the government and individual are discussed.

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Transport market has a unique character that demand quantity can be expressed as several aggregated level such as generation, OD, mode, route and link. Thus one can have a question, “Which level of aggregation should be used for benefit estimation of transport project?” For this question, this paper proves theoretically that benefit measures for each level of travel demand have same value if consistent travel demand model and price quantities are used. We validate the property in any kind of model that is consistent with random utility theory, a model with deterministic route choice, and a model with any OD-level demand functions. Finally we verify the applicability of this theoretical property empirically with Nested Logit based network model developed by Maruyama et al. (2003).

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The aim of this paper is the damage factor of the expansion joint that exerted a big influence on traffic injury was analyzed. As a result, some significant findings came out of this study, as follows. 1) The main factor to damage the expansion and contraction fitting is traffic of the large-sized car, the maximum main digit interval, and elapsed years from the repair. 2) The damage rate of the rubber expansion is 2 and three times the steel-made expansion, and it tends to repeat damage with the same lane. 3) The possibility of the damage generation increases rapidly when 20 years are passed from the repair. 4) The condition with a high contribution rate to the damage generation was arranged, and the emphasis check method was advocated.

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A method for evaluating LCC of pavements considering drivers’ route choice behaviors is proposed in this study. It is assumed that drivers will change their route choices due to the changes in driving cost brought by deterioration of surface condition of pavements, and the changes in traffic capacities brought by both surface conditions in summer when repair works are made to pavements, and in winter when antifreezing admixture dispersion is carried out. LCC minimization problem is formulated as an implicit program, in which LCC is minimized subject to probit-based SUE which expresses drivers’ route choices. A simple numerical example obtained by using test network is lastly presented.

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The distance view such as Mt. Fuji was thought of as a critical factor for the landscape in Edo City. This research analyze the visibility of the distance view from any point in Edo City. A geometrically corrected historical map, a digital terrain model, and a height data of buildings are maintaind. Various historical materials are used for making the height data. With these historical data, visiblity maps of distance views in Edo City can be made. As a result, it becomes clear that Mt. Fuji contributed the landscape from Edo each place where the description was not seen in historical materials. The result imply that the visibility analysis will contribute the historical landscape analysis.

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An enlightened viewpoint in infrastructure management is put forward whereby institutional arrangements and physical facilities, as well as parts of the natural environment, are systematically coordinated to serve the common needs of different stakeholders in society in a sustainable fashion. A pressing issue in infrastructure management is how to encourage cooperation among divergent stakeholders who envision different alternatives to infrastructure development, management and renewal. Accordingly, requirements for public participation in infrastructure management in North America are discussed. Their policy and governance implications are also discussed including possible utilization in Japan. To facilitate conflict resolution, a range of techniques designed for handling multiple participant-multiple criteria problems are suggested.

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