This proposes a scenario-planning-based-approach for the development of science and technology strategy through the analysis of energy crises in East Asia. This method, with the help of experts of various fields, enables the comprehensive understanding of the problem to be considered, the development of a robust science and technology strategy for uncertain future, and the evaluation of individual research and development themes from various aspects. This research conducts comprehensive analysis of risk factors, developments of two scenarios with the emphasis on 'China's future', and investigation of strategic viewpoints needed on science and technology and evaluation of individual research and development themes for each of the scenarios.

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Safety self-regulation by the industry is becoming an important issue in Japan. In the U.S., it is now believed that the Institute of Nuclear Power Operators (INPO), established as a self-regulatory organization by the nuclear industry after the TMI accident as well as other industry organizations, such as Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), contributed significantly to improving nuclear safety performance. Independent third party organizations, such as American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) also played an important role in assuring effective self regulation in the US. After a series of incidents and mismanagements, Japanese nuclear industry is now also trying to strengthen self regulation. This paper analyzes self-regulation and its practices in the US, especially focusing on the organizations and management of INPO and others, and it is found that the following factors are important to be considered for Japan; (1) principles and practices of information disclosure, (2) incentives for enterprises (3) role of third party organization for standard setting and its decision making process.

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Knowledge production for problem solving faces a difficulty caused by the difference in evaluation criteria between activism and academicism. Evaluation criteria for problem solving is more pluralistic than that for academic interests, which means higher evaluation uncertainty for an activist research. Engaging in knowledge production for problem solving helps little for a researcher's career in academic discipline. To promote knowledge production for problem solving, it is necessary to provide proper incentives for researchers. One way to realize it is to evaluate activist research as well as traditional academic research, and to host problem-oriented projects of related issues successively so that a researcher engaging in context-rich knowledge production can make a career pass.

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An analytical framework is examined to make a succinct argument over compounded complexities of societal risk characteristics and risk governance. The framework is sought primarily from the public's standpoint who is both exposed to risks and set to hold its due sovereignty of civil society, in order for experts to bring meaningful prescriptions for the society. A set of risk descriptors is constructed to see if a typological imaging stands from risk characteristics onto risk governance structure. Standardized and clear sketching of risk characteristics and governance over multiple risk agents is expected to lead to an early problem detection and to bring acceptable and mediatable social way out.

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For designing a framework for safety law system, we picked up potential issues on the following three aspects while collecting source information: 1) the collection and analysis of the data and the selection of the data providers; 2) the establishment of an incentive system for providers who voluntarily supply data; and 3) issues when the supply of information is made mandatory. Then, we develop option on those aspects and evaluate those options from the non-legal consideration perspective and the general law perspective.

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In this report, we focused on the legal issues of designing penalties in a framework of safety law. First of all, we picked-up the issues of criminal penalties from the perspective of both their original functions and their influences on investigation on the causes of an accident. Second, we describe and compare the criminal, administrative, and civil penalties, focusing on their concrete measures, their functions, and their situation of establishment. We examine especially the possibility of using administrative penalties and civil penalties as alternatives of criminal penalties. We finally list up the options to cope with the issues of criminal penalties, and evaluate both their feasibility and effectiveness.

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Indemnity insurance systems take various forms, and are applied with various methods, depending on the nature of the risks concerned and policy decision . Such systems have various policy on premium, and include those; 1) operated independently by private insurance companies, 2) involved and administered by the public sector, 3) requiring international reinsurance, and so on. In order for indemnity insurance to contribute to lifestyle stability and the establishment of a safe society, it is necessary to develop options relating to insurance systems, with view to secure finance, coordination with legal systems and regulations, and to develop evaluation criteria for choosing the appropriate insurance system and premium policies. In addition, insurance industry can play supplementary roles for safety standard setting, preventive measures and information provision relating to safety.

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It has passed for 50 years since the outbreak of the Morinaga dry milk poisoning caused by food additives containing arsenic compounds derived from the industrial waste. The whole picture of the case has not yet fully revealed, while the permanent salvation promised for the victims seems not to work out satisfactory. It is urgently needed to face the reality of victims at present and to study the history of the case. Some preliminary research on 1955-1973 suggests the importance of epidemiology and independent investigation in case of the big scale food poisoning, and the necessity to discuss the role of experts and academy after the major incident like this case. It is strongly needed to collect and reserve the records about the case for further trans-disciplinary research.

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It is unquestionable that "risk communication" is required for consensus building on many risks of technologies. The communication, however, can be obstructed by unfamiliarity and difficulty of technical terms or technical concepts which experts have developed for a long time. To improve accessibility to the technical information, we propose a novel technique for information retrieval (IR) which uses community ontology of experts. We will detail the notion of community ontology for formulating ontology vector, an ontology-oriented feature vector to introduce it into the conventional vector IR model. Then we will show results of an experiment demonstrating improvement of performance brought by the proposed technique, and discuss the effect that will be produced by the technique in practical use.

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The present investigation explores the current state of organizational violation, and examines its relation with occupational prestige, organizational norm, and organizational attributes. Data from 501 respondents, a representative data stratified by age and gender, showed that occupational norm prevented the experience of organizational violation. Additionally, people who thought their occupation had social obligation tend to experiment the organizational violation.

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People have certain feelings of pride to their occupation, which is called "Nobless Oblige," i.e., subjective occupational prestige (SOP). On our assumption, keeping heightened SOP, organizational violations can be reduced. In this study, we focused on SOP of fire-fighters, one of occupations which has been reported few organizational violations. In study 1, we carried paper-interview, and inferred from results that having relationship with general citizen would affect the heightened SOP (n = 73). In study 2, we explored the psychological structure of the fire-fighters' SOP. The results showed that the structure of fire-fighters' SOP was different from other general workers', and heightened SOP was related to organizational Pro-social behavior (n = 187). "Nobless Oblige" as one of background factors of generating violations can be utilized to prevent organizational violations.

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Nowadays, We have many social problems which it is difficult to solve because of diversification of a sense of values and complication of social problems. For example, the agreement between residents and does not go smoothly in infrastructure project. In this research, we build up the mental structure model of residents and this model make the evaluation of each measure possible. We build up two models; Action Choice Model and Satisfaction Model. Action Model explains mental changing structure before a resident join a objection movement. Satisfaction Model decides the factors that residents get satisfaction through participation of objection movement. Using this two models, we can compare the effect of measures and guess a suitable order of measures.

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A prototype of multi-agent simulation is developed to predict state of emergency evacuation of crowds. Agent is designed according to KISS principle and simple rules are assigned, though they can reproduce the speed decrease due to the crowded-ness. Some physical restrictions are given to the rules such that human movement is simulated, and agents move naturally. Coupled with earthquake simulation and structure response simulation, an emergency evacuation simulation is carried out. These simulations are seamlessly made by utilizing a structure model to construct an evacuation path model. Although the validity of the simulation results is not validated, they appear intuitively reasonable.

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It is true that inhabitants are anxious about chemical plants because it has the possibility of the accident which has an influence to outside. Therefore, the risk communication on the plant risk plays important role to establish the safe and ease industrialized society. For smooth risk communication, information desired by inhabitants shall be transformed towards them. The present study concerns information and transform process desired by inhabitants. The questionnaire survey with 1,500 respondents is completed through internet web. As the results, they desire the information not on chemical and technical issue but on protective measure against accident and recommended action in case of emergency. It is also shown that they request to receive the information directly from the plant.

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This article explores how and to what extent the collective decisions of relevant actors affect the evolution of renewable energy systems. For the analyses, we obtained empirical findings from case studies of local projects where energy technologies utilizing wood biomass were first introduced in two different parts of Japan. Then, considering the systemic characteristics of the wood biomass energy technologies, the article shed lights on how the actors coordinate their different types of interests and incentives and how they make sure that their commitments are credible simultaneously.

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This paper looks at new social decision making processes in Japanese local community in dealing with nuclear power plant siting and draws lessons for future processes, but not intended to analyze nuclear policy itself. The paper analyzes two cases; one is Maki-machi in which nuclear project was cancelled, and the other is Hokkaido in which siting of new plant was allowed. The major findings are: (1) both "formal" (legally binding, or institutionalized by law) and, "informal" process should be taken into account for analysis, (2) social learning, evaluation of options and renewal of agenda, are the notable functions, (3) "procedural fairness" is important, (4) common understanding of objective and approaches is a key factor, (5) who and how to set up "decision making arena" is an issue to be studied.

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The role of cultural heritage is immeasurably important in human lives and societies. However, invaluable treasures have been damaged or lost due to natural disasters such as earthquakes. This paper studied fundamental properties of Japanese traditional wooden structure: Kiyomizu temple in Kyoto which is famous for its high stage structure. First, aging change of the building was investigated using measurement of moisture content. All the columns had no severe aging change, and the moisture content was less than 20%. Then, the micro tremor was measured to evaluate the natural frequency and damping factor. The results showed the fundamental natural frequency was 1.8Hz and the damping factor was 7%.

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It is difficult to find effective solutions to emerging social problems, because we don't have a method to use the existing knowledge in devising the solution to such problems. From this point of view, it is desirable to establish the method to cross-sectoralize the existing knowledge for design of solutions to social problems. In this article, we factor out 15 problem characteristics / 40 solution characteristics and organize the relationship between them through reviewing 42 existing cases. And then, we attempt to establish the method to utilize that relationship for design of solutions. Additionally, through applying this method to counterterrorism issue in Japan, we confirm the effectiveness of the method.

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Our group of medical safety, mission program 1 in Shakai-Gijutsu, has been making inter-disciplinary researches for improvement of medical safety. We has developed "Clinical Navigation System", which will be taken advantage of as tools for communication of clinical knowledge, between patients & medical doctors, between medical doctors & medical doctors, and between clinics & hospitals.

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This paper explores an economic impact of digital rights management(DRM). DRM is an essential platform that enables protecting various rights of digital contents, facilitating their distribution and establishing a payment system with which contents creators and/or providers can recover their ex ante investments. It is, however, a noteworthy fact that DRM can also hold some elements, such as reduction of usability, creation of deadweight loss and entry barrier, that may diminish individual and/or social benefits. In this paper, I will take up some elements that can make social benefits or costs in the case of adopting DRM. Further, I will try to examine each element from an economic point of view.

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This paper aims to propose a practical methodology of problem identification and structuring for regional transport policy. The strategic regional transport planning of the Kanto Region is used as the case study. Ten stakeholders are selected including central/local governments and transport operators. Then the interview-based discussions are conducted with them. The cognitive maps of stakeholders are integrated into the structure of transport problems in the region. After the main factors and drivers of the problems are abstracted from the maps, the problematic issues are analyzed based on the problem structure. Finally, the differences of problem perceptions and interests among stakeholders and their political relationship are discussed.

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Medical Organizations strive to supply safety and high quality medicines every time. But that efforts have not been known by society, and we receive news of medical accidents and medical misconducts. This study aims to describe subjective hospital efforts and approach from the view point of legal researchers. The complexities of medical policy have much to do with legal systems, for example, disease related groups-based prospective payment system. This study advances the good relationship between medical organizations and legal systems to evaluate hospitals efforts, and medical policy in the future.

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As WTGs (wind turbine generators) are getting introduced rapidly, especially large scaled wind farm siting often causes environmental disputes. The results from literature and interview surveys on nationwide trends of disputes and intensive comparative case study on two cases which occurred at the same time and brought contrasting results sug-gested the followings; Scope of the agenda in the formal process is determined by institutional requirement, informa-tion gained at informal process and definition of public interests. Environmental disputes arise from a fact that wind farm siting is exempted from the application of Environmental Impact Assessment Law and also a lack of knowledge regarding local ecosystems of wild birds and animals. Therefore, an institutionalization of Strategic Environmental Assessment realizing multilevel governance among central and local governments, and an application of step-by-step participatory approaches in which agenda setting is moving from the general such as the necessity of the facility to the particular such as the location of sites are recommended as a social decision making process to address these dis-putes for the future.

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The situation of the traffic safety field in Japan in recent years, an accidental death is decreasing by enforcement of various traffic accident countermeasures of each organization. However, many accidents occur, and since there are also much accident injured, it cannot yet be optimistic about the present condition. Therefore, in order to reduce traffic accidents, it is necessary to solve a problem. This research attaches importance to the collaboration and cooperation of a subject related to traffic accident countermeasures. And new directivity is examined and shown.

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We studied the public perception about invasive species risk through two types of questionnaire. The results of the questionnaire survey to 20's show the requirements of social invasive risk governances for risk management of early warning and pre-response. The results of the questionnaire survey of all parts of the country show public 20's people knew little about invasive species risk effects. Moreover, the results of the questionnaire survey to the students of Mie University show that the differences in risk perception were identified as the cause of different responses for the invasive species risk. Finally, we made policy proposals that the requirements of social risk governance are the establishment of response systems for invasive species risk, for example, special hot line.

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This study explored participants' evaluation of a citizen panel conference, which conducted as a part of hybrid participatory conference "Forum for creating environmentally sound material-cycle society by citizen participation". For this purpose, 16 participants of the citizen panel were required to answer the questionnaire items of competence of the conference, participant's empowerment, and intention of citizen participation after the close of the conference. In this paper, the main concern for our analysis was the relationships between participants' empowerment through their experience of joining the citizen panel conference and intention to participate in similar citizen participation projects. The more they had gotten empowerment (efficacy and effectiveness), the higher intention to participate in further activities they had.

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In building a safe and secure society, sharing a common understanding between experts and citizens is indispensable. To accomplish this requirement, it is necessary to establish a communication channel between both of them. This paper proposes an immersive virtual conversational environment IPOC, aiming at activating communication between experts and citizens. Using IPOC interaction functions, experts can give more concrete advice to the citizens by sharing background photos as perceived information,. On the other hand, the citizens can describe the situation on their sites using IPOC contents creation support functions. There functions in IPOC are expected to contribute to bidirectional communication between experts and citizens.

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