The forms of risk communication in Japan changed drastically after the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake. While the pre-Earthquake risk related information was based on the myth of zero-risk, the post-Earthquake risk communication has required a much higher level of fair and open information, which is now the main current of this field. At the same time, other theoretical and practical problems have recently been founded. Those problems include (1)the philosophy and value system underlying risk communication, (2)the causal relation between risk communication and credibility, (3)whether the citizen really want risk information or not, (4) whether citizen's risk perception is emotional or not, (5)the organizational climate as a factor in successful risk communication, (6)misunderstanding of the meaning of precautionary principle, (7)the skill of the risk communicator, (8)the importance of wording and logic in risk communication, (9)how to construct good relations between risk agent and mass media , etc. The purpose of this paper is to integrate the notion of risk communication with the macro view in both time and space, which used to be based on the idea of a one-shot and local solution to future disasters.

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As co-chair of the Regions Committee of the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA), Olivier Salvi presented the structure of SRA with the Council, the various Committees and Specialty Groups, the Membership. The presentation focused on the future of SRA, with the evolution towards the internationalization, and the development of a more global society with a greater role given to the SRA Regions. The examples of the recent creation of SRA Latin-America, and the initiatives to organize new SRA Regions in China, India, and Africa, as well as the reinforcement of the role given to SRA Japan, SRA Europe, SRA Russia, SRA Australia New-Zealand are concrete activities supporting the objective of internationalization of the Society. The main idea is that the Regions Committee, composed with the current Leaders of the main SRA Regions, provides input to the council on the evolution of the Society, the key priorities in terms of topics or in terms of activities that SRA should support or address as for example the organization of the Risk World Congress.
Some initiatives launched in Europe dealing with the coordination (defragmentation) of the investment in risk research, and the sharing of research results perfectly illustrates how the use of the SRA network can benefits all stakeholders at the origin of the initiatives or from SRA. As an example, a short description of a large project co-funded by the European Commission is provided. The aim of this project entitled iNTeg-Risk is to develop a risk management framework for emerging risks related to industrial activities. Per definition, this is a global issue of interest in every regions of the society.

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In this paper, we reviewed the risk researches and activities on the past, diagnosed the current state of risk assessment, and suggest advancing risk assessment for the future in Korea. In Korea, interest has been raised for risk assessment of environmental pollutants since 1990, and academia and government began to research this field since the past about 20 years. The G7-Project (1992-2001) placed the basic technique of risk assessment and management research for environmental pollutants. The Korean Ministry of Environment (KMOE) is focusing on the Eco-2 Project (2001-2010), which seeks to identify strategies designed to produce mutually beneficial outcomes for both the environment and the economy. The KMOE revised the Korean Toxic Chemical Control Act to further carry out risk assessment and management of toxic chemicals in 2003. The Korean government inaugurated the National Environmental Health Action Plan-10 years (2005) and established the Korean Environmental Health Law according to the precautionary principle in 2008. Now, it is time to optimally utilize those databases in various fields, especially for risk based decision-makings in environmental policis. Based on experiments, we focused on risk assessment of nano materials and particles, endocrine disruptor compounds, and microbial. Through the support of the government agencies and the affiliated research institutes, the development of various guidelines for integrated risk assessment and management of pollutants were made possible to effectively perform the environmental law.

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The Environmental GIS by National Institute for Environmental Studies visualizes environmental data and predictions on maps and graphs.

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Many standardization organizations are working for syntactic-level of the interoperability. At the same time, semantic interoperability must be considered as a heterogeneous condition and also very diversified with a large-volume data set. Ontological information such as terminology, classification schema, data model, and gazetteer has been developed for earth observation data integration. This is a very challenging method because collaboration or cooperation with scientists of different disciplines is essential to its reliability. A semantic MediaWiki is applied to register and update ontological information as a semantic network dictionary as well as the data model registry system, which promises to be a useful tool for specialists. Constructed ontology is used for the reference information required for interoperability. For integration of earth observation data, it is essential to clarify ontological information, such as same-as, contain, near, part-of, is-on, consist-of, and so on.

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In modern days, chemicals are extremely important raw material that generate products with high additional value in various industries. Their kind and production volume increased explosively in the latter half of the 20th century. On the other hand, many unacceptable accidents have been caused based on terrible hazard of chemicals to human health and environment all over the world. In this study, at first, systems and trends concerning environmental safety management of chemicals in Japan were researched. Next, an international current concerning strategic collection and maintenance of environmental information was considered. And then, an opinion concerning collection and maintenance of environmental information for environmental risk management of chemicals in a future was presented.

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Disaster risk governance is defined as “cooperative administration through the social interactions (risk communication based on disaster risk information) and the formation of social networks of various major concerned bodies. The materialization of disaster risk governance requires the following three conditions:(1) Multiplicity of disaster risk information and its community-wide sharing, (2) Social decision-making based on deliberate communication and discussions between various stakeholders, (3) Establishment of horizontal and non-institutional cooperative frameworks consisting of various organizations and individuals in society through the use of social relations and personal incentives. In order to recreate and support risk governance, two types of platforms are necessary. One is the platform for providing the interoperability of disaster risk information scattered in different organizations. Developing “disaster prevention clearing house” to search and automatically recommend disaster risk information required for participatory risk assessment. The other is the e-community platform for assisting formation of communities with the enriched social capital.

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A PBPK model (physiologically-based pharmacokinetic model) was used to estimate the age-dependent differences and inter-individual variability in the biologically effective dose. Physiological parameters, partition coefficients and metabolic parameters for 7 age groups of Japanese population were estimated. Metabolic inhibition in liver was evaluated using an interaction-based PBPK model for the chemical mixture. Significant differences in the calculated biologically effective dose of volatile aromatic hydrocarbons (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene) in air were observed between the 18 exposure scenarios. This study demonstrated the feasibility of incorporation of a PBPK model in the risk assessment process to evaluate the age-dependent differences in toxicokinetics and exposure scenarios.

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The “Precautionary Measures” guideline for nanomaterials introduced by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in 2008 is a groundbreaking policy for the Japanese government in the sense that it thematically applies precautionary principle probably for the first time in Japan. The problems of this guideline, however, lie with its evidence, content and process, which affected nanomaterial products and business in a negative way and also raised public awareness of risk. This paper examines some of these problems are rooted at the concept of precautionary principle to be formulated in a risk governance framework. For this it argues that participatory models and frameworks of risk and precautionary governance could fix the flaw in the existing risk assessment and management system.

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The National Institute of Technology and Evaluation (NITE) conducted a Web-based survey on citizens' awareness of chemical risk from the PRTR system. Citizens usually associate the word “chemical” with chemicals in food, their main interest with regard to chemical substances. They did not show much interest in publicized data on chemical substances based on the PRTR system. Citizens rarely participate voluntarily in risk communication sessions, and when they do, management of chemical substances may be regarded as outside their purview.

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