The Great East Japan Earthquake is discussed herein from the viewpoint of risk concept. This event is a typical low-frequent and huge-consequence disaster. The consequence is significantly large, including approximately 20 thousand tsunami victims and the serious accident of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, both of which can be studied effectively and should be treated appropriately on the basis of risk concept. This monograph introduces that international standards have been recently developed to promote the use of risk-based approach and to standardize the concept and procedures. In addition, it is demonstrated that although the risk concept is quite effective for more rational decision-making processes in any cases, the recent disaster reveals that the conventional risk concept needs extension into spatial as well as temporal domains and unique concept "Safety Burst" is proposed to represent the serious state due to low-frequent and huge-consequence events for modern engineering systems which are much more complex, multi-functional and inter-dependent than before.

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There has been broad debate on importance of risk concept in response to Tohoku Earthquake and the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in 2011. In this paper, risk concept is summarized and rearranged. Firstly, the definition of risk is briefly introduced, emphasizing on the distinction between "aleatory" uncertainty and "epistemic" uncertainty. Then, the characteristics and analysis methodology of natural disasters are summarized, with a focus on earthquake disaster. Finally, new concept "resilience" is introduced, which can enhance the risk concept much further.

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More than two years have passed since 2011 Tohoku earthquake and Tsunami. Natural disaster risk remains one of the top concerns of business leaders, since economic system becomes increasingly globalized and complicated. In this paper as a beginning, an overview of natural disaster is introduced with historical trend analysis, and then upward trend of economic loss due to natural hazards is revealed. In addition to this, general information of mechanism of natural disaster is presented. Finally it is pointed out that it is necessary not to aim to zero-risk but to measure and manage risk appetite from the standpoint of Enterprise Risk Management-ERM. Specifically, since business continuity activities of entities will only work if no employee suffers physical damage, it is highly recommended that anti-disaster measures such as seismic reinforcement is implemented. Besides, it is suggested that partnership within the industry is absolutely necessary for business continuity against catastrophic disaster such as 2011 Tohoku earthquake.

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Business Continuity Management (BCM) is formed by global concept. Any kind of disaster as the cause of the incident, BCM is a type of activity results management. Its purpose is to enhance the resilience, it is important to normal time activities. It's important normal time activities in BCM. Company's current situation in Japan is that the concept of BCM is not yet known. Business continuity activities of many companies has not reached the BCM, it is confined to create a BCP for it. It is necessary for the future, including the spread of the certification system BCMS, spread the correct knowledge and concepts of BCM.

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The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011 had a serious damage on the Japanese industry. Automakers were forced to make deep cuts in production not only in the regions that were directly affected but also global production via the disruption of supply chains. Our global production also reduced significantly and gave undue inconvenience to large number of the customers. Based on our experience of this disaster, we attempt to establish a business continuity management system in the "Toyota-way" (named as "Toyota-way BCM"), which enable to accomplish a risk reduction of the supply-chain without losing the productivity and business-efficiency. Although our efforts have just begun, our concept and principles of "Toyota-way BCM" and our attempts to develop new management systems are introduced. And an advantage of the "Toyota Production system (TPS)" in the recovery from a disaster is also discussed.

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An aseismic reinforcement of existing medical facilities such as an important hospital that building function and emergency medical services would be needed in a large earthquake is themes in this paper. First, the damage situation of hospitals in the Great East Japan Earthquake, the typical damage events of buildings and a characteristic of damage examples in medical facilities were shown as a characteristic of material damages by earthquakes. Then, the progress situation of the aseismic reinforcement for existing medical facilities were shown, and necessity of further promotion of the reinforcement for the building structure and importance of grasping the progress of the earthquake proofing for nonstructural components and medical equipment in detail were emphasized. Next, some essential points for the seismic retrofitting of the building structure, nonstructural components and medical equipment were highlighted to perform effective aseismic reinforcement for existing medical facilities. Finally, the seismic isolation retrofit, as the most effective method for seismically upgrading of existing medical facilities that need to ensure not only the safety of buildings but also the operability of medical treatment, was introduced.

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When development of ISO 26262 began in WG16 after 2005, Japanese automotive industry began the examination of ISO 26262 issues. The OEM was strongly interested in the hazard analysis and risk assessment. JAMA carried out a study of the Severity, Exposure and Controllability in cooperation with JARI. JARI performed a variety of the vehicle experiment tests for controllability. JARI and JAMA accumulated many data. In addition, JAMA and JARI examined the issues of the application on ISO 26262. However, these examine need many opinion and knowledge from suppliers. Therefore, JARI set up the ISO 26262 steering committee in JARI and pushed forward activity of the common understanding. ISO 26262 does not require the third party certification. However, many companies have the demand to perform in cooperation with a third party for explanation of having confirmed ISO 26262 conformity. The active safety techniques are unavoidable in the future, these are achieved by electronic control and more and more complex. ISO 26262 is important for ASIL as safety, and quality management is carried out properly in the company. Automotive is going to introduce automatic driving in the future, therefore ISO 26262 becomes important and fundamental.

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In this issue, activities for quality and safety management in Yodakubo Welfare Organization are presented through an interview by the members of the editorial board. We interviewed Mr. Yutaka Muraoka (Managing Director) and Mrs. Misato Hoshina (Assistant Manager of General Affairs). Yodakubo Welfare Organization is a social welfare corporation, which was instituted in 1996 jointly by three municipalities : Nagato, Wada, and Takeshi, in Nagano Prefecture. It has a dedicated special elderly nursing home known as "Tomoshibi" in 1997, and is now operating some of the special elderly nursing homes, day-care facilities andgroup homes. Generally, problems related to the provision of services in welfare facilities tend to be staff-centered. Yodakubo Welfare Organization has been promoting activities for quality and safety management to achieve the "end-user centric" services. Interview contents include (1) history of Yodakubo Welfare Organization, (2) characteristics and problems of welfare services, (3) history and organizational efforts forquality assurance and management, (4) difficulties and ways to overcome them, and (5) future aspirations.

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Recently, number and type of newly developed products increase with a product being frequently developed under collaboration of many organizations. Therefore, it has become essential to improve overall quality of DR (design review) which these organizations implement, and methods for evaluating maturity of DR are intensively studied. This paper focused on hardware products and considered DR as an activity for discovering design errors using past experiences effectively and efficiently, and then formalized a model of DR and proposed a method for evaluating maturity of DR based on the model. Moreover, this evaluation method was applied to DR of concept design/detailed design implemented in various manufacturing companies. As the results, it was found that persons having appropriate knowledge/experiences can use this method, evaluate quality of DR in reasonable time and identify the areas to be improved.

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Taguchi proposed the robust parameter design method to reduce the variations of a system's output characteristics by designing its control factors so as to make the system robust against noise factors. Many theories and application researches have been conducted on the robust parameter design method for linear systems. In this paper, we propose a new statistical methodology that integrates response function modeling with Taguchi's standard condition SN ratio approach for non-linear systems. This integrated modeling approach is valid even when the ideal function of a target system is not identified. This paper illustrates the effectiveness of the proposed method through a real data.

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