This paper suggests definitions of consistent priorities among automated vehicles and surrounding mobility systems as abstract contracts using laws in order to ensure the safe traffic environments. Behaviors keeping the priorities in the abstract contracts support automated vehicles and their surroundings to avoid occurrence of deadlocks. Automated vehicles including embedded software systems are required to interact with other independent systems such as pedestrians and other vehicles. However, unless the basic conventions about decision-making and behaviors for them are defined, automated vehicles behavior may cause deadlocks among constituent systems. Deadlocks can be hazard sources that surrounding mobility systems cause traffic accidents or emergency vehicles cannot achieve their purposes. Therefore, automated vehicles and surrounding systems should avoid deadlocks to reach safe environments minimizing harms. To address these issues, abstract contracts should be defined before concrete design stage of automated vehicles. In this paper, first, whole traffic environments including automated vehicles are regarded as a “System of Systems” involving automated vehicles. Second, priority relations are set for each pair of constituent systems. Then, the rankings about priorities are calculated with pairwise approaches. We use three different methods to compare the rankings. It is shown from the priority rankings that there are possibilities for automated vehicles to cause deadlocks in traffic environments due to their different decisions. Moreover, we consider the influences caused by the differences of laws using Japan and the State of California as sample scenarios.

With foreign workersʼ contributions to the labor force expected to increase greatly, this research examines health and safety issues, including accidents, unique to foreign technical interns. This research surveyed general contractors re-garding the current status of foreign technical interns working in the construction industry in Japan. Survey results showed the following three points: （1） Foreign workers in the framework construction industry have increase signifi-cantly. （2） Using human resources effectively and strategically will prompt a rapid growth in the population of foreign technical interns. （3） The risk of occupational injury or death for these foreign workers is higher than that of native-born workers in the construction industry in Japan due to poor language skills and a lower level of general awareness of safety issues and rules in different cultural contexts.

Japan is a country with few energy resources on its own and hence must rely on foreign energy resources. Crude oil and natural gas imported to Japan have to pass through geographical choke points that result in a greater risk than most western countries. So far this has not yet been considered enough compared to the potential risk. In this paper we expand the existing energy diversity index consisting of resource concentration risk and country risk by proposing to include a new risk indicator on chokepoint risk. Previously, when comparing energy security by country, it was necessary to integrate different types of measurements and data points. However, this new indicator can directly compare the risks including concentration risk, country risk and chokepoint risk. In addition, as an application example, it is possible to quantitatively and quickly evaluate the change in the degree of energy security degree when shifting a resource import from one country to another country with reduced risk.

Effects of light floating beads on occurrence of thin-layer boilover were studied. To avoid crisis such as huge oil fires and boilover （and thin-layer boilover） in oil and chemical complexes after great earthquakes, light beads have been developed. Therefore, in order to know effects of beads, an experimental study was conducted in small scale pan （Diameter: up to 0.3m）. Addition of beads into pan increased the fire/flash points，and did not cause thin-layer boilover in diesel pool fire. Therefore, addition of small beads into oil tank is one of countermeasures against severe incidents such as huge oil fires and thin-layer boilover after great earthquakes or other causes.