To address social issues through science and technology, it is crucial to change R&D program planning and management with traditional supply-side approach. In this paper, a case study of R&D management in a funding program with demand-side approach promoted by RISTEX-JST was conducted. Adequate collaboration between demand and supply side actors from early-stage of the research was one of the important factors to receive a high evaluation for projects. To involve adequate actors and come into their role in projects, program management to identify the functions necessary for projects from research to implementation of the outcome to solve the social issues and evaluate the state of the network of actors was required.

View full abstract

There are many product accidents caused by both poor considerations on product design and inappropriate way of use by users. It is crucial to reduce product accidents to achieve "safe and secure society." It is effective to visualize, structure, and reuse both trouble information and implicit knowledge, which lies scattered among users, providers, accident responders, and so on. However, a well-defined methodology for such activities has not been established.
In this study, we propose a comprehensive methodology for socio-technologizing product safety knowledge, through extracting the knowledge from various players and feeding back them to product design and safety education for users. We also show an example of the application of the proposed methodology, by applying it to oil stove.

View full abstract

August 2012, the Consumer Affairs Agency published a Report for legislation of the united food labeling law. The study group didn't investigate the disincentives of the law making. Nevertheless, they discussed not only the general issues but also specific issues. After all, their discussion was the vagus. Accordingly this paper tries to investigate the disincentives of the issue and to define the function of the JAS law. This paper shows that minimizing the function of the JAS law and setting "public health" to the main of the new law are important. This combined idea is one of the effective solutions for the issues.

View full abstract

The initial risk assessment of chemicals, concentration of chemicals in the environment media, holistic and panoramic view that is important. This study aims to develop the visualization method for 354 substances (the ordinance was revised and now 462 substances) data specified in Class I Designated Chemical Substances of Law concerning Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) using geographic information system (GIS) by 1 km mesh all over Japan. As a result of applying this study to atmospheric Local model and estimating ambient concentrations, it became possible to find out the area exceeding the environmental standards value which was not able to be found out by a 10 km mesh.

View full abstract

The development of radio frequency identi?cation (RFID) technology makes it possible to track the daily activities of residents when installed in a residential home. We studied what valuable information can be extracted from location data of the daily activities of residents collected over several years. We installed antennas into a group home housing six people with dementia and asked them to wear slippers into which RFID tags were inserted. Data was collected over thirty months. We found a seasonal trend with all residents but one person who was wheel-chaired. For example, their activity level was lowered during summer. We identi?ed a resident whose activity was in rapid decline three months prior to her death. For another resident who fell down, we identi?ed a rapid decline in activity decline a week prior to the incident. Both also showed a change in their behavioral patterns. Long-term data collection is useful for assessing residents' health conditions. With sufficient data, we can detect abnormalities.

View full abstract

This paper discusses the availability of ride-share as the travel mode for transportation-poor people under vacuum of public-transport services in the low-density and thin-demand residential area. By reviewing the characteristics on implementation of ride-share, based on previous studies, we show three conditions on the realization of a ride-share system. Focusing on the system for the sake of residents in Harayama area, Hara village, where habitation in two regions between Tokyo and Nagano has been promoted, it surveyed about the attitude to and the feasibility of ride-sharing. It turned out that ride-share providers are greater than ride-share users and that the ODs of trips are similar between the providers and users. These imply that it is not difficult to implement the ride-share in Harayama.

View full abstract

Based on the survey conducted during the car-free days in Nagaoka, Niigata, we aim to find out the travel characteristics of traffic attendants as well as key factors affecting the travel behaviors on these days. In the proposed model, the behavior of future attendance was considered as a dependent variable. Meanwhile other factors including the past experience factor, the consciousness of environmental protection, voluntarily refraining awareness in using cars, the consciousness on car-dependence were explanatory variables. The results of the model show that the past experience factor and the consciousness on car-dependence as well are important factors that strongly affect the behavior of future attendance. Some measures to increase the participants are also proposed in this paper.

View full abstract

This study has developed a measure to estimate the economic impact of personal expenditures of public road construction workers in the construction area through a case study of a tunnel construction project. The study results show that the annual total expenditures of 88 construction workers amounts to 17. 56 million yen and per construction worker, it is 200 thousand yen. In the total expenditure breakdown, the expenditures for the commodities of daily use take about 70 %. The economic ripple effect of such expenditures in the area is estimated to be 29. 33 million yen, which will increase the annual gross product, 168. 46 billion in the area by 0.17 %. This ripple effect could be recognized in manufacturing, agricultural, commercial transport and auto industries.

View full abstract

Currently, the decrease in population and the aging have become important problem in Japan. The purpose of this study is analyzing residential attitude in the marginal local community. The data of the questionnaire survey focusing the disaster danger of Nanmoku Village in Gunma was used for all analysis. Nanmoku Village is one of the typical marginal local communities. We used factor analysis, cluster analysis and structural equation modeling. Through these analyses, we obtained five factors, "convenience", "safety/danger", "community", "residential environment" and "natural environment". In addition, based on the result of the factor analysis, we divided districts into a type. And we clarified that the quality of life and residential attitude are composed of individual attributes, district characteristics, and disaster experiences.

View full abstract

This paper analyzed actual conditions and methodologies of building damage assessment which carries out damaged area suffered from the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku Earthquake. Authors conducted questionnaire survey for local governments which suffered from earthquake and Tsunami disaster. As a result of questionnaire survey, it become clear that duration of building damage assessment survey, number of supporting staffs, survey tools and so on are difference among the local governments which has some type of damages. And, many local governments have some opinion to carry out the building damage assessment which needs to keep fairness, quickness and accuracy.

View full abstract

In this study, we set up the following hypothesis first; "the modifying method of emergency disaster control measures just after the occurrence, which only focused on failed measures, has remaining issues from a comprehensive perspective". After that, through the case of Tokai-mura on the Great East Japan Earthquake, we try to test of the hypothesis and reveal how that situation occurs. In the result, we find that standardizing the criterion of decision or action may obstruct the on-site measures suited to the occasion. In this situation, it is important to clarify the boundary between the part of standardization and the part of leaving to an on-site judgment.

View full abstract

This study examines reasons why governmental organizations engaged in public administration (PA) need to be inde-pendent and shows that 'independence' can be categorized as independence from (1) other departments in government, (2) politics (e.g. partisanship), and (3) those subject to its activities. It is argued that treating PA in terms of its resources (treasures (i.e. finances), authority, organizations and nodality (i.e. information)) is meaningful for evaluating the true extent of independence. Analysis of PA in Japan identifies goals for future study, such as more sophisticated methods for quantitative evaluation and further investigation of 'independence' and institutional design to build public trust in PA.

View full abstract