It is recognized also in Japan that financial institutions who provide project financing for PPP projects do play important roles in scrutinizing the feasibility of those projects and effectively monitoring the progress in their implementation. In Japan, however, the effectiveness of such functions does not seem to have been clearly recognized by the relevant stakeholders. This paper identifies the peculiar practices in Japanese PPPrelated project agreements and the project financing arrangements and also presents some policy implications and suggestions for the improvement of designing PPPs in Japan and the need for policy coordination with financial regulators.

Research on public opinion related to infrastructure projects has been done in a wide range of disciplines such as civil engineering, architecture, economics, sociology and psychology. While it is important to grasp the transition and trend of these research in a bird's eye view, it is not easy to do so because the research theme is wide and the number of research papers is enormous. Therefore, in this study, a systematic method was developed and applied to retrieve academic journals by keyword group, extract and classify papers, and reveal evolution research fields and papers by systematically retracing cited documents of classified papers. As a result, 52 journals were collected for research papers from 2003 to 2018 and analyzed spreads and trends of fields and papers such as project evaluation.

This thesis describes a measurement of Crowding-In and Crowding-Out effects by regional public investment. There is an international criticism for the share of public investment in total government spending in Japan by OECD (2016). In order to evaluate the effects of social capital on the economy, it is necessary to measure the effect of the public investment not only from supply-side but also from demand-side. Hatano (2008) estimated the effects of public investment on private investment by using the error correction model including the stock equilibrium. This study applies the model to recent macro Japan data and its regional data. There are two purposes in this study. First, it estimates the effects of public investment on private investment in macro-level. Second, it estimates the effects in regional level and compares the tendencies. At the macro level, it is founded that there is Crowding-In effect. At the regional level, the Crowding-In effect is more dominant in rural areas than urban areas in the long run.

It suggests the existence of a risk perception paradox that high risk perception does not always lead to personal protective actions. This issue is casting doubt that evacuation behavior at heavy rain is considered to be a result of cautious decision making because the slow response occurs frequently. Then, this study applies naturalistic decision model which regards situation awareness as important to evacuation decision making model at heavy rain. The situation surrounding his/her home at heavy rain varies from hour to hour. To be aware of the situation probably leads to raise awareness for the occurrence of flood. In this study, modeling the process of evacuation decision making at heavy rain, we adopt the situation awareness as explanatory variable. Concretely, anxiety scale model for flood are estimated based on the data of the evacuation behavior in Tatsuda area, Kumamoto city on the Northern Kyushu Torrential Rain July 2012.

Preparing and managing a circumstance that enables elderly people to have an easy access to join any social activities are is an important issue of building urban policies. To make the policies, it is needed to bring up efficient and effective ideas for facility placement and transportation policies while considering the financial restrictions . This research aims to develop a practical evaluation method for policies that support activities of elderly people, based on behavioral data. It would be a new method for “Smart Planning” which has been proceeded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, to support local governments in formulating facility location planning. In this study we conducted well-detailed the behavioral survey of elderly people that used both GPS systems and paper based question form, and it lead to obtain the basic knowledge of frequency and destination of the personal daily activities. Furthermore we introduced the frameworks of a practical method for evaluating public facility locations and transportationpolicies, which includes public transportation and pedestrian, learned from the analyzed result.

It is required that the opinion expressed to the social capital maintenance plan such as public transportation service is based on “public judgment”, but for that purpose sufficient and accurate regarding the living situation of the target area residents The information needs to be presented. The authors propose a method (decentralized information provision method) that “divides the information of all residents of the area into several people and distributes it to opinion expressers”, but empirically confirm the usefulness of the method It was not done. Therefore, in this research, using this method, we presented information on the movement environment of local residents and plan alternatives, conducted a questionnaire survey asking WTP for plans, and conducted an empirical analysis. Under the set conditions, it is clear that WTP can be estimated with an error accuracy of 3 to 7%, and it is clear that this method is useful in the range that allows the error.

Residents’ opinion to the infrastructure development such as local public transport service should be expressed based on ‘public judgment’’. For that purpose, sufficient and accurate information regarding the level of quality-of-life of the residents living in the subject area needs to be provided. The authors proposed a method (decomposition survey method) that ‘‘divides a set of information of all residents of the area into several sub-sets and distributes them to opinion expressers’’. However, empirical confirmation of its usefulness has not been done. The purpose of this study is to conduct an empirical analysis of this method. Through a questionnaire survey with information provision on the mobility of residents and alternative plans to improve it, we collect WTP data for each alternative plans and analyze it. The result shows that the range of estimation error is around 3 to 7%, that supports the usefulness of this method for practical use within a certain extent.

In order to solve various problems related to humanitarian logistics, private-sector cooperations are recommended in various research and recommendations. For this reason, many municipalities have con cluded disaster relief agreements for humanitarian logistics with private-sector corporations. However, major disasters can cause damage to traffic networks and a large amount of support requests. If such a disaster occurs, there is a high possibility that external support will not be received early. Therefore, it will be necessary to take an emergency response only with the resources left in the affected area. In this study, we proposed a humanitarian logistics plan which asks local companies and residents for providing trucks and handling workers. Furthermore, we performed simulation in Shimanto Town, Kochi Prefecture, and clarified that enough resources can be secured by the plan. By carrying out such an agreement between private-sector companies and residents before the disaster occurs, it is possible to realize more effective humanitarian logistics operations.

Evacuation from a riverside area is a recognized method to prevent risks to elementary schools during floods. The school principal must decide whether to evacuate quickly using limited information. An evacuation time-line for an elementary school has been developed to assist in making the decision about whether to evacuate quickly. Continuous improvement that keeps pace with regional changes is important. We studied improvement of the time-line in a case in which a big new shopping mall has opened near the school. We checked the evacuation time through evacuation drills from the school to the shopping mall. In addition, questionnaires for parents were used to discuss ways to evacuate before a flood occurs. As a result of such activities, an evacuation time-line for use by elementary schools near a river can be prepared. The evacuation time to the shopping mall is shorter than the time to a safe area on a hill. However, the mall is located in the flood risk area. In the new time-line, the shopping mall is set as an emergency shelter.

Travel behavior models are adopted to infrastructure planning. However, the premise of models as principle of human behavior is not always realistic. We can built up a following hypothesis: it is presumed that those who learn travel behavior models strengthen the view on human nature which the models assume. We conducted questionnaire survey to verify the hypothesis. As a result, learning travel behavior models makes people tend to have a view that human act on simple motives for simple purposes.

Due to changes in social structure such as declining birthrate, aging population, and diversity, it is important to develop elevators as barrier-free facilities for public transportation. Each companies try to response these social demands and realize the condition suitable for the host country of Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020. Therefore, elevators will certainly increase in the future. On the other hand, maintenance and management costs increase as the number of elevators increases and this problem becomes heavy burden to the company. In order to reduce the burden of each companies, it is necessary to properly maintain to reflect the actual usage. The study focus on elevators at subway stations and illustrate the current situation and issues based on the number of operation times. Furthermore, the study clarify the relationship between the actual usage and maintenance cost to propose concrete countermeasures quantitatively for cost reduce control.

Issuing disaster certificate which is used to decide contents of victim’s support need accuracy and rapidity. However issuing disaster certificate have taken a long time in earthquake disaster so far. So, government need more efficient issuing disaster certificate mechanism. This study developed estimation system of roof-injured buildings to grasp a big picture view of earthquake damage from aero photo images using deep learning. This system is expected to be able to estimate more rapidly by algorithm to make estimated image data automatically using location information of building polygons on GIS. As a result, this system can predict if house is covered with blue sheet or not with about 93% accuracy. And it can predict if house is damaged or not with about 81% accuracy. Although deep learning needs many and high quality images, there are few images having high quality at the present. So we should consider developing image recognition algorithm and how to collect image data to operate the system in actual earthquake disaster.

Walking space has several functions to do with walking needs, such as convenience and safety for passing by and getting on/off vehicles and comfort and attractiveness for staying and making on-street activities. However, it is hard to say that street improvements sufficiently take account of the influences on the multiple functions. Therefore, this research analyzes the influence on walkability evaluation of the street-edge design of in-between spaces on building sides and on road sides, by evaluating internationally diverse street environments through experiencing the walk in virtual reality (VR) environments. First, street design elements are compared among international case study streets. Then, using the VR tool, the experiment is conducted to evaluate the street design of the case studies and the perception of walking needs. As a result, the street edge design significantly influences multiple walking needs, which is different by the design elements of building-side design and road-side design.

This research is to clarify the disaster prevention awareness and disaster prevention behavior of Muroran citizens by the questionnaire survey during the Hokkaido Eastern Iburi Earthquake that occurred on Sep tember 6, 2018. The questionnaire survey randomly extracted 10,000 households from the basic population (18 years old or older), and re-extracted and distributed 5,000 households by the weighted average of the number of households in each town. The number of valid responses was 2,187 samples. As a result of tabulation, it became clear that there were differences in disaster prevention awareness and behavior after the earthquake for each age and residence area. Next, cluster analysis was applied, the features of each cluster were organized by question item, and disaster prevention education in the future was considered. In addition to having self-help awareness, such as stockpiling, it is necessary to take measures to foster the co-help ability to transmit information necessary for disasters among generations.

In recent years, in large-scale disasters frequent in Japan, damage to supporters requiring evacuation action is enormous. Unlike sudden disasters such as earthquakes, flood damage can be predicted based on data, and although the speed of disasters is relatively moderate, it will suffer as much damage as well. However, at the time of flood damage, if early evacuation can be done before the damage expands, human damage can be drastically reduced. Therefore, in this analysis, the purpose is to reduce human damage caused by a new segmented evacuation information provision method, considering of correspondence to people who need more time to evacuate, we focused on physical conditions and regional characteristics. Through this analysis, it was possible to grasp the actual condition of the damage when it was inundated at the 1 breakage point of the river, which is the first class river flowing through Komatsu city, Ishikawa prefecture and the influence by town letters by changing information provision became clear.

In this study, the contents of the disaster prevention backpack were followed for three years in terms of quality and quantity, and the awareness structure such as anxiety points in preparing the disaster prevention backpack was clarified. From the analysis in this study, we grasped the change of the disaster prevention awareness of the guardian through the contents of the disaster prevention backpack, the preparation awareness and examined the usefulness of the disaster prevention backpack.

The purpose of this research is to estimate the influence of disaster risk, residence in the neighborhood with family, and feelings for the town on the location of the newly built detached house in local area. In this research, while grasping the present location of the newly built detached house, the factors of the locations are specified in the eastern Tokushima urban area. We focus on not only disaster risk such as tsunami disasters, but also closeness with families and feelings for the town. As a result, it can be found that the location of newly built single-family houses in the target urban area is influenced not only by the public land price, the number of rooms, and the convenience of transportation, but also by the love for the area. As a difference of the location by the time of the decision-making, some new houses are located in the neighborhood with the family by foot before the earthquake. After the earthquake, it is important to avoid the disaster risk estimated from the maximum assumed depth of tsunami inundation.

In this study, specific spatial panel dataset is built using listed land price data from FY 2000 to FY 2018 as well as past data on undergrounding projects in Kyoto City until FY 2017, which was collected and sorted in collaboration with Kyoto City. This data is used to estimate the causal effect of undergrounding and utility pole removal projects on nearby land prices considering project start, underground work completion, and existing utility pole removal dates via a difference-in-difference (DID) technique. Based on the panel data from FY 2010 to FY 2018, a price premium (i.e., marginal effect) of 12.5% is observed upon the completion of utility pole removal projects, if the spatial range of the treatment group is defined as 50 meters from the site where the utility pole removal project is conducted. On the other hand, a price premium of 7.5% is observed, if the spatial range of the treatment group is defined as 200 meters from the site. Additionally, to consider the difference in the timing of the effect appearance, the causal effect at the project start, underground work completion, and existing utility pole removal is examined. There is a larger effect after pole removal than project start or underground work completion.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attentional engagement to the traditional Japanese-style street facades by memory driven attentional capture. When walking along the traditional Japanese-style streets, anyone has an experience that their eyes glued to the traditional Japanese-style street facades. Previous studies have suggested that the attentional engagement was facilitated for similar element that visual working memory held. From these previous studies, it was hypothesized that the visual working memory of traditional Japanese-style streets might cause the attentional engagement to traditional Japanese-style street facades and this hypothesis was examined by a visual search task. The results show that the attentional engagement to the Japanese street facade was caused by memory driven attentional capture.

Many researchers have analysed road networks by considering their components such as node, link and connection. On the other hand, only few researches refer to tangible factors of road network such as length and orientation of each road. In this paper, we propose the new evaluation method of road network by using directional statistics. At first, we draw the graph of orientation of each road around a station. Next, we develop the method to estimate parameters of probability density function of the orientation. Then, we employ the clustering method on this estimated parameters to classify road networks around stations. Finally, we showed the applicability of the proposed method by applying them to over 1,500 stations in Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

This study examines utilization methods towards opening remains of gun batteries to the public while preserving the heritage, focusing on the site quality of gun battery remains from which people can look out over the sea. A questionaire survey conducted with the local governments of 27 cities, towns, or villages around Japan that manage the remains of gun batteries revealed that about 30% of the gun battery remains are not open to the public, and that there are issues related to such things as the deterioration of the remains and cutting or trimming weeds and trees at the remains of gun batteries that are open to the public. The 45 sites of gun battery remains that are already being used were classified by usage into four categories: parks, observation decks, camping grounds, and learning facilities, and the site quality and environmental characteristics of each site were grasped. Furthermore, the site quality and environmental characteristics of 19 sites of the remains of gun batteries on the Tokyo Bay were grasped by a field survey, and comparison between them and the characteristics of the 45 sites of utilized gun battery remains revealed that the remains of the Kannonzaki First Gun Battery are appropriate for a camping ground or a learning facility and that the remains of the Koshigoe Gun Battery are appropriate for a park or an observation deck.

This paper proposes a population projection method for municipalities in Japan consistent with the socioeconomic scenarios of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), which is widely used in the area of integrated assessment models. A pool model is used to avoid the inconsistency problem in the estimation of inter-regional migration caused by the traditional net-migrant rate method. How the parameters in the model should be set according to the scenarios of SSPs is proposed in this paper, and the model developed is used to project the population for municipalities in Japan toward 2050. Furthermore, the differences in the results between the scenarios are investigated. The result reveals that, although the decrease in the total population cannot be avoided in any scenarios of SSPs, the total population can differ depending on the fertility rate and the scale of immigrants. Moreover, inter-regional migration across municipalities can be significantly different between scenarios, which affects the future regional population.

In recent years, renewable energy is spreading rapidly. Smart grids are expected to make effective use of distributed power sources. However, the power associated with photovoltaics and electric vehicles, which are important smart grid elements, is direct current (DC). Power losses occur during conversion to and from alternating current (AC) power used for the power grid and businesses and residences. Nevertheless, no report of the relevant literature describes a study verifying smart grid effects, particularly addressing power loss. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed the power supply and demand of a residential area in which a smart grid is assumed to exist. We verified the DC smart grid effects by calculating the power loss and power self-sufficiency rate that occur in AC and DC smart grids. Results show that 1) the power loss can be reduced by a maximum 74.8% by a DC smart grid and 2) a DC smart grid is suitable for residential areas with many vehicles and detached homes owned by residents.

These days, there is a lot of argument about whether to abolish local railways. Thus, this study aimed to make clear the relationship between abolishing local railways and social population change by age groupsaround stations, focusing on modal share just before abolition. Railways abolished between 1981-1990 and existing local railways in Japan were selected for analysis. The analysis showed that there was a statistically significant difference in social population change of young people, including those who would graduate from high school within ten years between the case of abolition and that of continuation. Focusing on the modal share of railways and private cars just before abolition, it was revealed that there tended to be a difference in social population change of specific population groups between the case of abolition and that of continuation regardless of modal share. In addition, there was a difference in social population change in areas that had a higher modal share of private cars compared to those with a lower modal share of private cars. Finally, there was no clear difference in population change in areas that had a higher and lower modal share of railways.

In recent years, river improvement based on the natural environment and the local culture is required, as well as the flood control and water utilization function. Especially it is said that “kawa-machidukuri”, the community development from the river, which various stakeholders collaborate to create rivers and community development together for creating sustainable society and environment. The aim of this research is to clarify the process and structure of participation and collaboration for consensus building which necessary for creation of public space and activities in water-front. So, it is analyzed that transformation of the river basin and community development activities in the Kikuchi River basin of Kumamoto prefecture, by using literature, historical materials and newspaper database. And collaboration process in the Kawamachidukuri project in Kikuchi city is observed as a case study As a result, it is clarified that the “Ba” is important to think together river improvement and community development along the river, and it is necessary for various stakeholders communication in flat relation, seamless public space design and sustainable collaboration system.

This study utilized participant questionnaires and GPS log data to analyze the characteristics of city center excursions focusing on trip location, length of stay and step counts. The data reveals that users of public transport and those who visited the city center for the purposes of having a meal, socializing, or participating in entertainment activities, recorded higher levels of both step counts and length of stay. In addition, we compared and divided data to reveal additional relationships on the composition of participant attributes. Finally, questionnaire data answered by study participants, suggests that participants who recorded both high step counts and longer trip lengths, tended to visit various shops and facilities that straddled areas in the city center.

It is thought that urban leisure activity have a certain influence on the degree of happiness of people, and in many cases it is necessary to move to the place of activity to do that. However it is not enough to clarify the impact of the convenience of the transportation on subjective well-being through the leisure activity. In this research, we focused on the leisure activity, and examined the relationship between accessibility to the activity place, activity frequency, and subjective well-being. We focused on not only a objective index such as time or cost, but also a subjective index easiness of going or satisfaction of transportation as accessibility index.

Result showed that high perceived accessibility and frequency could raise subjective well-being by some activities, and the frequency increase so that perceived accessibility is high.

“Compact Village” aims at maintaining a living environment in rural areas by aggregating facilities. However, it is difficult because of population decline and withdrawal of facilities. Results of this study suggest how to maintain a “Compact Village” with Automated Driving Vehicle with Utility Service “ADVUS” applied to grocery stores and medical facilities in automated driving vehicles that operate unmanned. Additionally, we compare the numbers of people executing behaviors and their usage intention for users at medical institutions. Those results lead to estimates of the numbers of people who can be expected to use “ADVUS” in a “Compact Village”. Results show that people want to use a medical facilities in a “Compact Village” more than in a central area, but many people use a medical facilities in central areas. If “ADVUS” is deployed in a “Compact Village”, more people will use it than use it now.

The subject of this research is “West Japan urban diagnosis”. It was implemented by The Nishinippon Shimbun Co., Ltd. in 1962-65 with the cooperation of urban experts. In this case, nine out of 21 cities are taken as an example. The purpose of this study is to analyze the contents of the discussion in the urban diagnosis in the past and to consider the influence that the diagnosis has on the urban policy after that. The research results are shown below. It became clear that the role of the Western Japan city diagnosis in the discussions related to the plans in the 1960s played a role to complement the issues in the comprehensive national development plan in 1962 and masterplan. The characteristic of urban diagnosis is that it promoted the wide-area view to each city, and clarified the positioning of each city on the scale from Kyushu to each prefecture. From the analysis of the overlap between the diagnosis committee members and the masterplan deliberation committee members and the similarities of the contents, we pointed out the influence on the city policy of the past newspaper media. It was also pointed out that the city diagnosis played the role of “reference document” for formulating a masterplan.

Municipalities are taking the lead in forming core areas. The core areas are tiered, with separately planned urban and rural areas. In the future, although cooperation between core areas in a wide area exceeding the municipality area is considered, integrated organization of the core area hierarchy is not done from a wide area perspective. Therefore, this study ascertains the number of facilities and the number of trips from a wide area perspective for the core area in each municipality plan. The purpose is to contribute to a regional setting of regional hierarchy through analysis of divergence between plans and actual conditions of these regional core areas. Analyses have revealed that urban core areas are identifiable as small core areas in the plan. Even small core areas are identifiable as central ones depending on which ones have public transportation. From the above, a divergence exists between the plan and the actual situation, suggesting the necessity of reviewing the core area layer from a wide-area perspective.

Since the establishment of cultural landscape system, it has been necessary to protect the mechanism for creating cultural landscape based on the local identity. In the Aso area that is the research place of this study, it has been considered the preservation and utilization of cultural landscape which is evaluated as grassland for a national important cultural landscape. The aim of this research is to clarify about the characteristic and a future problem by considering the preservation activities of cultural landscape that allow moderate change, in the Aso area. Firstly the system for protection of cultural landscape is summarized. Secondly it is observed the system and organizing the preservation of cultural landscape in the Aso area, based on actual discussions and hearings. And it is analyzed the preservation activities that allowed moderate change. As a result, it is clarified that sustainable preservation of characteristics of lifestyle and industry in each region based on the awareness for the system of cultural landscape. And, it is important corporation the other protection systems in the Aso area.

In recent years, city centers are declining along depopulation and suburbanization in local cities in Japan. This study aims to examine relationships between pedestrian flow and spatial configurations of streets based on the structures of street networks and land use in city centers. We assume that improvement of the quantity of total floor space along a street has a certain relationship not only with pedestrian flow volume in the own street but also with that observed on the neighbor streets, which is directly connected to the street in the street network. As a result, pedestrian fow volume shows significant positive correlation both with the amount of commercial floor space along the street and with that along the neighbor streets. This result suggests that an improvement of floor area of commercial facilities in directly connected streets should be an effective means to encourage activities in city centers.

In Japan, there are expressway emergency ramps for ambulances apart from standard use interchanges. Although these contribute to critical care, there are only 17 such ramps throughout Japan and therefore further development is necessary. Existing research on emergency entry or exit ramps has mainly focused on mortality risk reduction benefits. However, practical tips for development has not been sufficient. This study identifies requirements for development of additional ramps based on the development history and utilization of the emergency ramps. Specifically, the study summarizes the development motive and process based on minutes obtained from expressway companies. In addition, the study clarifies actual usage of the ramps based on transportation data obtained from 60 fire department headquarters in 5 prefectures where emergency ramps exist. Based on the results, the study discusses the necessary conditions for future development.

The shortage of accommodation facilities that will serve foreign tourists is becoming serious, especially in the metropolitan areas. It is necessary to promote the supply of diverse accommodation facilities to appropriate places on a policy basis. This study has analyzed the actual location of accommodation facilities and their temporal and spatial characteristics by developing spatial data of accommodation facilities in Osaka prefecture. In addition, the equilibrium state of the supply and demand of accommodation facilities has been expressed by performing the parameter estimation. As a result, it is revealed that the location of accommodation facilities gets spread as the demand for staying gets diverse.

At present, the population of Japan is concentrated in Tokyo, and the degree of concentration in Tokyo is very high compared to other advanced countries in the world. The concentration of the population has the negative effects of local decline, vulnerability to disasters in the capital, etc. It is thought that Tokyo's concentration should be corrected. In order to correct the over concentration, it is first necessary to examine the factors of the over concentration. In the domestic and international past researches, researches have been made on factors of concentration, but empirical research based on quantitative analysis has not been sufficiently performed. Therefore, in this study, in order to clarify the influence of railway development on the population concentration, we conducted an empirical analysis using domestic and international data. As a result, it is suggested that uneven distribution of railway infrastructure affects population migration, and that over concentration of railway improvement in Tokyo area may bring over concentration of population in Tokyo area.

Highway bus is one of the intercity travel modes that can be alternatives of railway routes. One of the important features of highway bus is flexible route design comparing with railway. Due to relatively small demand, frequency of bus services is possibly not enough for travelers to satisfy their preferences of arrival time. If transit services are available between buses with different destinations, available buses for specific origin-destination (OD) possibly increase. This study conducts questionnaire survey including Stated Preference (SP) survey in order to reveal features of travel behavior of highway bus route choice and factors required for bus connection services when new bus connection services at rest area of expressway are available.

The purpose of this research is to use mobile spatial statistics data to estimate the OD flows between tourist areas. Specifically, we propose a method for the identification of missing trips in the database that occur due to the anonymizing processing and the specificity of the aggregation method. In the original data set we compare the mesh specific temporal population data with the population in the previous time interval plus inflows minus outflows to the zones. Based on observed differences between these two, we introduce a 2-step correction method that draws on gravity model ideas. The estimations perform generally well on a hypothetical OD table, though some OD flows remain over- or underestimated. The implementation on an actual OD table suggests that the estimations are improved by the indicators based on area-specific population indices.

There are some reports that some driver overrun the IC exit of expressway. In this situation, driver sometimes makes to act wrong-way driving to return appropriate traffic lane. Currently, a number of vehicles with self-driving function is increasing. Wrong-way driving might be more popular because selfdriving function makes drivers to decrease the concentration for driving. It is important to install countermeasures to avoid overrunning the IC exit.

In this study, two kinds of countermeasures is considered, such as 1) color of pavement is changed to red at every IC exit (500m away from the exit) and 2) IC number is changed to kilopost to be able to understand the distance to the IC. Driving experiment by utilizing the driving simulator is conducted to clarify the benefit of these countermeasures. From the result of this experiment, countermeasure to change pavement color could bring better effect so as to increase the percentage of confirming the exit sign. Moreover, countermeasure to change IC number makes driver to increase attentions to front view. Result of the questionnaire for subjects shows higher reputations compared to current situation for both countermeasures. Therefore, both countermeasure could be useful to avoid overrunning the IC exit.

This study estimated the distribution of the value of travel time savings (VTTS) for toll road users in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area. In order to obtain less biased and more reliable results, the combined RP,SP-off-RP and SP data were utilized. Further, we developed a random-coefficient panel mixed logit (MXL) model that can accommodate detailed observed/unobserved heterogeneity, panel effects, and covariance heterogeneity. The parameter estimation results implied that the computed mean value of the VTTS from MXL models are around 20～40 (JPY/minute) for the trip travel time of 1～3 hours and are substantially different from the estimated VTTS value from the standard binary logit model, and that the fitting of Johnson S_B distribution outperforms Normal or Log-Normal distributions.

In car sharing service market, which is now widely spread in the society, service providers allocate cars in service spots and users visit spots in order to enjoy the service. In such a service market, positive feedback mechanism functions thanks to the scale economy through the decrease in transaction cost; i.e.,the more users visit a market, suppliers provide more service to the market, and vice versa. In this paper, an equilibrium model to show the characteristics of car sharing market is presented to investigate agglomeration mechanisms and the possibility of multiple market equilibria. In addition, effects of change in market circumstances on the equilibrium is investigated.

In recent years, in Japan, Quality of Life (QOL), which refers to the quality of each person's life and socially viewed quality of life, is regarded as important, and research on children's QOL is also in progress. While the decrease of children's play time is regarded as a problem, in this study, we examined the relationship between children's fun-activities and out of school activities in the upper grades of elementary school and the QOL of children. As a result, children's QOL and play contents, time, number of people, the playground is closely related, QOL (high) children shown a high percentage of play outside and with more other children. QOL (low) children on the other hand prefer to play alone in own home. In addition, factor analysis of QOL was conducted by Quantification Method Type I, it was found that sleeping time and the number of people to play with hold a large influence on children's QOL.

Spaces for pedestrians’ stationary activities on urban streets is important to regain the bustle of the central urban area. However, spaces for mobility and stationary activities are not functionally assigned. To propose a method for the assignment in a road network, it is necessary to clarify the behavioral characteristics of pedestrians’ location choice for stationary activities. In this research, stationary activities were classified from the viewpoint of location choice. “Selective stationary activities” for which pedestrians would spontaneously choose the location was focused among them. Questionnaire survey was conducted on the three types of stationary activities and it became clear that influencing factors differ by the activity types. It was shown that people with longer duration of stationary activities prefer to choose less crowded locations rather than nearer but more crowded locations.

The road network investment that has been carried out continuously is one of the most important projects and is still needed. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, the road network evaluation methods independent from the probability of disaster occurrence is required. Based on these backgrounds, this research attempts to evaluate an impact of road investments in a long-term period by using the network topological method, that is independent of event occurrence probability and traffic demand. The road networks from 1985 to 2024 in Gifu Prefecture are evaluated by an eigenvector centrality analysis considering traffic capacity and link length as weights. The result verifies that the impact of road investments on the road supply performance can be identified by the proposed method.

To solve the heavy congestion and delay problem of the morning rush hour in the Tokyo metropolitan area, we develop a work start time model. In the model, seven time zones separated by city, town and village units every 30 minutes are selected, and a time accumulation variable expressing the spatial and economic connection between the regions is introduced in the model formula. Parameter estimation was carried out by structure estimation using the pseudo maximum likelihood method since the selection probability of other regions is included in the starting time selection probability of its own area. As a result, it is obvious that the parameter indicating time accumulation grows larger in the suburbs than the central part, the starting time of other areas is not influenced in determining the start time of the downtown area, and the start time of the city in the suburbs is affected became.

According to the traffic accident statistics in Japan, accident occurrence rate for residential road is around 2.4 times higher than that for arterial road. Despite this fact, a certain level of drivers might recognize driving on arterial road as more dangerous, resulting in avoiding arterial road usage. Therefore, this research investigated the driver's perceptions toward traffic accident rate, and then analysed the impact of information provision related to traffic accident risk. The results showed that about 30% of respondents perceived accident occurrence rate for arterial road higher than that of residential road. In addition, providing accident risk information might have greater potential to enhance the arterial road usage through the correction of perception bias.

In Italy, the construction of a high-speed new line was started relatively early. In 1970, they began construction of the first section of the line, and started operations after 1977 in order from the completed section. In recent years, the new rail line connecting Torino-Milano-Roma-Napoli have been completed. The speed of intercity trains has been improved by developing rail vehicles that can travel at higher speed on the steep curve of conventional lines. In this research, several indicators of traveling time between major cities were measured at each of six points selected at roughly 10-year intervals from 1963 until 2015, and their features are considered.

As a result, it has been confirmed that the speed of intercity trains has been steadily improved (that is, the boarding time has been shortened). However, there are some intercity rail routes with insufficient improvement in convenience except speed, such as low frequency of operation and inconvenient transfer. Therefore, it was found that the Expected Value of Traveling Time (total travel time index) might not necessarily improve in the entire nationwide network.

Visually impaired people can walk on the street using a voice AR application that replaces visual information by auditory information. However, there are always some risks. It is difficult for visually impaired people to use it safely in unfamiliar areas, and to understand voice guidance correctly.

This research tries a virtual reality system that reproduces sound of the city using sound virtual reality in indoor space and uses the voice AR application for the visually impaired people. We improve the recording method and reproduction method of environmental sound, and aim for the development to "sightseeing verbal maps".

In the public transit navigator system, the user's search behaviors, such as the requested departure place and destination and what time to move, is recorded as log data. The inputted conditions in the public transit navigator system represent the user's real desire for their movement that is not bound by the current timetable status of public transportations. The purpose of this study is to propose a methodology for designing the timetable of the bus according to the searcher's requests using the log data of “Bus-Net”, which is a public transit navigator system introduced in Tottori Prefecture, Japan. A search by the same searcher was extracted in this study and judged whether or not the movement of each searcher allows a delay with respect to the designated time inputted in the system. Then, this study calculates the loss of time—defined as the difference between the time the searcher wants to go outside and the actual time of bus operation—and develops an algorithm to design a bus timetable to minimize the total required time, adding riding time to loss time. Additionally, using the proposed method, this study shows a timetable of when the number of buses is reduced and clarifies the influence of reducing the number of buses on the user's loss of time.

In this research, we grasped the specific contents of the points with good feeling and the points that felt unpleasant about customer service of the route bus driver. It was revealed that while there were many drivers who provided good service, there were also drivers with bad attitudes. Among those who experienced bad service once, some wanted to reduce the use of buses. Even if many drivers continue to serve good customers, there may be a reduction in bus users due to bad service drivers. The comparison of customer service among cities shows that the frequency of service is better in the large cities, and the awareness of increased use when receiving good service is also high. On the other hand, the sense of diminishing use when receiving bad customer service was the same result in the large cities and the other cities.

In this study, we estimate the macroeconomic effect and the change in population distribution in Japan that existing highways have made by simulation model. As a result, constructing highways have contributed to improvement of GDP (From 1985 through 2015, Tomei expressway and Meishin expressway raised GDP of Japan 49.4 Trillion yen in total). On the other hands, according to analysis on production and population distribution in the country area, highway network have enhanced centralization of economic power and population in metropolitan area, especially in Tokyo and increase the disparities rural and urban areas.