In city-center renovation, it is usual that several development projects including public and private facilities are employed. Furthermore, on the viewpoint of city-center revitalization, the promotion of the public utilization of these facilities is important. That is, the total management of development projects and approach to public is required. However, this management usually becomes difficult because the various organizations concerned are based on their own institutional systems. In Hyuga City, the railroad elevation, new station building, station parks, land re-adjustment, shop-concentration in shopping districts were executed in the city central area. The city established 'Hyuga City Urban Design Committee' to manage these projects. This paper analyzed and evaluated the roles and functions of the committee, based on the project records and questionnaire surveys. This paper revealed that the committee actually played the total management role well for these projects.

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On water supply project in local government, as it adopts independent accounting system based on public enterprise accounts and it is necessary and indispensable to secure earnings including water rate to sum up the budget in the next fiscal year. This research paper targets the water supply project on water and sewerage section in the local government and aims at the construction of efficiency and an effective management system to achieve the business goals. In addition, it aims to develop "Cost management system" to analyze and to evaluate the cost of the activity that composes as a subsystem of the management system.

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The aim of this research is to improve company's biodiversity action plan by feedback on performance. CSR reports 2005, 2006, 2008 and related web pages provided by 218 companies, mainly listed on the first section of Tokyo Stock Exchange were quite useful to evaluate biodiversity related activities. Improvement methodology for company's biodiversity by feedback their performance data to competitive companies has been developed, tried, tested, and evaluated. Companies shall improve their biodiversity plan with this methodology.

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Conducted study on disposed disaster wastes were scrutinized and achieved by The Japan Society of Waste Management Experts mainly, and geotechnical aspect of Japan Society of Engineering Geology or The Clay Science Society of Japan after 1995 South Hyogo Prefecture Earthquake from the environmental impacts as bloated garbage. In this paper, the authors indicated desirable risk management, as determined by the regional features considering with waste management in case of The Niigataken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake in 2007 based on reconnaissance investigation and questionnaire. Furthermore, we analyzed recyclable geotechnical material with our experiment, as reference to Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Sequential surveys resulted in reduction of waste amount due to the separated garbage collection system by residents in persistent, ultimately, ban for enormity dumping under cooperation between family or citizen, therefore environmental mitigation as to vulnerability from helm of wallow mixtured waste through field survey and enquête. In addtion to that, we mentioned heavy metals in huge wastes based on our monitoring results of coastal area in Niigata Prefecture, and overviewed geotechnical remedy.

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After the earthquake on capital, public transportation will stop, and many people become difficult to go home. About the escape behavior in case of an earthquake, many existing papers assume coming home on foot. Earthquake resistance of the railway and subway has been raised after the Kobe earthquake, it will be possible to come home by using railway or subway. The purpose of the paper is build behavior model for return home on the situation which railway will restore after the earthquake soon. As a result of modeling, the earthquake victim prefers using railway to on foot, and a place of refuge influences this preference.

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In this paper we analyze problems involved in the development and installation of a camera system to care for persons with dementia (PWD) through an action research carried out at three group homes. We interviewed sixteen caregivers to investigate the effects on their work caused by the system and found that their work stress had been reduced. We noticed that the camera system plays an important role in the environment for supporting PWD and removing anxieties of caregivers. We also realized that there is a trade-off between protecting their privacies and making the place securable.

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Accident caused by the manufactured products is always a serious problem. In order to decrease such accidents and to protect the consumers, a unified consumer accident information system is needed. In Japan, the government has started to put more efforts on improving the accident information collecting system. However, an effective risk evaluation method based on such information has not been established. In this paper, we proposed a method for product risk assessment, based on a hazard matrix and a risk matrix. The data of product accidents were classified by applying the world standards concerning safety and injury. We applied the data of toy product accidents, which was extracted from the NITE accident database to verify the feasibility and utility of the proposed method.

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High science and technology lead to the large gap between experts and non-experts in the level of understanding or the decision making about acceptability regarding the science and technology. We took up a high-level radioactive waste (HLW) as one of high science and technology, developed the communication field on the web for public outreach regarding a HLW, and carried out the second test operation of the communication field in 2005. In this paper, we analyzed the results of the second test operation from the viewpoints of information flow both from experts to citizens and from citizens to experts. In consequence, we found that this field is effective as a information supplement field, but is not sufficient as a interactive communication field between experts and citizens.

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Between 2006 and 2007, Toyo-cho, Kochi experienced a serious antagonism among citizens caused by the dispute regarding the decision making of high-level radioactive waste (HLW) repository siting. In order to avoid such an antagonism in future candidate municipalities, decisive factor(s) of the dispute, especially unavoidable one(s) under the "voluntary-base" siting policy, must be analyzed. Based on our political process analysis, causal analysis and scenario analysis, it has been found that the "voluntary-base" siting policy cannot avoid the decisive factor that a voluntary application disables an applicant municipality from refuting the opposing movement criticizing "application for money".

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As a result of interviews of visitor center employees (fiscal year of 2005 to 2006), we found out that visitor centers do not function as well as they designed to. Many of them are not recognized as a part of PR section in power companies, but still have to face the public, and have to manage problems caused by situation change in society. Authors settled a meeting named "Communicators' Communication Meeting (Com Com Meeting)", whose purpose was to share practical knowledge and information between employees of visitor centers, and get new ideas to solve their common problems. Results of four different meetings are analyzed and the next steps to be taken are discussed in this paper.

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In this study, the author analyzed media coverage of nuclear accidents, selecting instances of such accidents purported to be scoops and instances of the same type of accidents sometimes receiving heavy coverage and other times receiving light coverage. The author further identified interactions occurring between elements of the mass media in the news coverage observed. The efforts of the nuclear power industry to guide the coverage were shown to be effective in several cases. However, since interested parties cannot prevent interactions occurring between the elements of the mass media, self-verification on the part of mass media is necessary. An understanding of these circumstances provides a clue to bridge the gap of acknowledgment between those involved and the mass media.

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This paper explores the Kosovo Conflict through the use of the Cognitive Conflict Evolution Model and the Integrative Explanatory Model. The paper discusses the perceptions of two conflicting sides, the Kosovo Serbs and the "West" represented by the United Nations Missions in Kosovo (UNMIK), investigating how from a perspective different from the common branding of the Serbs as the perpetrators and the Albanians as the victims, the West can be perceived as contributing to an exacerbation of the situation by the "rational loop" which leads to an aggravation of the human rights situation and the "cognitive loop" which leads to a support of independence under unsatisfactory human rights situations. The Integrative Explanatory Model provides a holistic representation of the main factors of the conflict, supplementing the mechanism unraveled by the Cognitive Conflict Evolution Model.

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Capacitated Arc Routing Problem (CARP) is the problem in which routes are made in order to minimize the total cost of vehicles' trip back to depot through each demand arc in network. For the cases like mail delivery where demand is concentrated, and road sweeping where road section itself is the target of service, it is suitable to adopt the approach based on CARP in which demands are set on arcs. In this paper, a solution of CARP, utilizing simulated annealing is proposed. Adoption of "string model", a one-dimensional alignment model makes efficient search for better solution possible. The proposed method is simple and implemented in one phase procedure, while preceding methods are constructed in two phases. Computational experiments are conducted on benchmark instances.

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It may be difficult for small communities to maintain the basic functioning of daily life of all residents by mutual aid because of the decrease of the population. To maintain the basic functioning, it is effective to establish the inter-community mutual aid system. This study aims to develop the methods to design the system by which demand and supply for the system is estimated and propose the effective coalition for mutual aid among the communities. Then the methods are applied to Misasa Town in order to show their usefulness.

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While the profit of bus services has been worse, the local government provides the public transport service, which is indispensable to the citizens life. It is important to think about fairness when the local government plans the public transport planning. But, the index of scheme assessment that can reflect fairness is very few. In this research, we made the index that evaluates the public transport plan from the aspect of fairness at the activity opportunity. Moreover, we executed the case study, and we show the technique for setting the timetable of bus in rural area by using the index.

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An outsider NPO manages the operation of community buses in a partnership relation with community representatives in a rural region of Yamakoshi and OTA, Niigata. The NPO plans to shift the partnership relation of NPO to a citizen-governed and controlled organization to achieve a sustainable transport for the region. This paper aims to estimate the acceptability structure of residents attitude to shift from partnership to citizen-governed organization using the structural equation model. The study reveals that higher evaluation of existing community buses does not necessarily improve the acceptance of shifting, but it is effective to appeal to the residents that the shifting to citizen-governed organization would contribute to the revitalization of rural communities.

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Foreign cases influence domestic policy making to some extent. In particular, after the launch of the European Union and the expansion of economic globalization in the 1990s, there is a growing interest in policy transfer - an phenomena of foreign influence in policy making. Most policy transfer research has been descriptive and prescriptive approaches to policy transfer are lacking. This article explored a set of approaches to policy transfer by drawing on a repertoire of case studies of policy transfer. The author argues that policy transfer processes, such as the network of actors, should be tailored to their policy transfer goals, such as social reform, problem-solving, and survival and compliance.

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'Public-private collaborations' or 'governance networks' have been found indispensable in public policies such as those for introducing and diffusing new advanced technology. In particular, in recent years, policy managers have been required to make efforts with regard to the 'governance of governance' or 'metagovernance'. Comparing with Sørensen and Torfing's recent work on effective and democratic 'metagovernance', this paper researches the R&D policy on fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) in Japan observing how the stakeholders recognize the policy and its feasibility, to find evidence on the conventional theory and to modify it. Furthermore, this paper aims to examine what a 'metagovernor' has to do to attain a certain policy goal, and to analyze endogenous and/or exogenous factors (such as the difficulty in distributing resources appropriately to competing technologies, the vulnerability of the research flow to political tides and personnel reshuffles, etc.) that should be taken into consideration in the policy processes for introducing and diffusing brand-new technology. We conclude that the 'metagovernor' is only a component of the plural 'metagovernance network', which imposes on him the abovementioned limits.

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Even though the TA has not been institutionalized in Japan, there have been many TA and TA-like activities, in areas including food, healthcare, energy and technology strategy, since the idea of TA was introduced from the US. This paper analyzes the nature and limits of those TA and TA-like activities; and lessons for the institutionalization of TA in the context of Japan are discussed, including the need for flexible framing and collaboration, the importance of appropriate distance, and the role of the Diet.

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How should we regulate scientific research, especially life science research, which is developing at high speed? To find the clue of this question, I return to the article 23 of the Constitution "Academic Freedom". I revealed the need of reinterpretation this article in response to the demands of the times, because it traditionally has not been provided and discussed that the Academic Freedom includes the freedom of scientific research in mind. Then, I considered about whether the freedom of scientific research is protected by this article, the best way to regulate scientific research, and the new issue which emerged from the freedom to publish the research result.

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Each stakeholder concerned with nursing role expansion has a totally different perspective on policy goals, agendas, values/norms, and problem recognition, and stakeholders are far from reaching a consensus. An inappropriate agenda might thus be set with neither mutual understanding among the stakeholders nor analysis of potential problems, and this may lead to unintended results. We analyzed potential problems and discrepancies among stakeholders by conducting a literature survey regarding the introduction of nursing prescription rights and found significant gaps among stakeholders' perceptions of the problems. We conclude that the perception gaps prevent the introduction of nursing prescription rights in Japan and that no mechanism has been found to adjust the gaps.

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This paper aims to establish a method to support designs of policies for prevailing anti-seismic retrofitting of wooden fragile houses by local governments. Specifically, we conduct the following three items. First, we list up and structure the criteria (or psychological factors) that individuals keep in mind when they decider their own attitudes toward seismic retrofitting. In order to neglect comprehensive items that do not overlap with each other, we exclude individual attributes and indirect factors. Second, based on the established structure, we propose a framework to rationalize the change in the distribution of the degree to which people intend to adopt seismic retrofitting. This enables us to investigate effective ways of combining different approaches toward the ultimate goal of prevailing retrofitting. Third, we investigate the most effective ways of embodying each of the approaches by identifying relevant demographic and personality variables.

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