After a joint seminar and a symposium with the SRA leading researchers, the Society for Risk Analysis, Japan (SRA-Japan) started its activities in 1988. Researches at SRA-Japan have been considered to cover various risk-related research agenda of disaster, industrial accident, food & medicine, environment, biohazard & infection, chemicals, radiation, disposal, and social & economic risk. Risk researches would have their stages of risk identification, risk assessment, risk communication & perception, risk management & governance, and risk education. The research articles on the Japanese Journal of Risk Analysis (JJRA) and the oral presentations at Annual Conferences of SRA-Japan showed that chemical risk assessment, environmental and health risks, risk communication & perception, and risk management & governance were the major agenda of the researches. SRA-Japan would hope to develop more international and more interdisciplinary researches.

View full abstract

This paper aims to promote awareness regarding risks associated with embedding knowledge caused by cultural impediments, when companies undertake joint business with other companies, such as alliances and joint ventures. These impeding factors have been accumulated over a long time during their organizational business activities. When companies that have different backgrounds start collaborating on new business, various types of cultural factors may impede their process of embedding knowledge. It is important for business practitioners to prepare for and manage the knowledge risk caused by these impediments when they conduct joint businesses. However, there are few articles that aim to bring attention to this risk. This paper reviews past literature which discusses processes of inter-organizational knowledge transfer, learning, embedding and generation, and how cultural factors impede these processes. The article aims to propose a new perspective on risk management.

View full abstract

The article reviewed recent studies related to risk and media reporting. Twenty-one articles cited in the journal Risk Analysis and containing the terms “risk” and “media” were examined. As a result, the following suggestions were made: (1) Since media reporting has many limitations, some complementary information is needed for risk communication; (2) it may be promising to take into account audience information seeking in order to build a more predictable model illustrating the effects of mass media.

View full abstract

Japanese Ministry of the Environment is launching a long-term large-scale prospective birth cohort study, Japan Environment and Children's Study (JECS). Though such study is labor-intensive and therefore cost-requiring, Japanese citizens can expect the results be used to improve environmental measures and therefore of advantage to the health of the Japan's next generation. The only argument is if the government be able to afford the large bill, which suspended the National Children's Study (NCS), similar project in the USA. Here I discuss the advantages and liabilities regarding the prospective cohort studies in general as a tool for resolving children's environmental health issues.

View full abstract

In this paper, the authors present a preliminary report on the development of programs to activate community participation in the assessment of mining risks. The data were collected at an international workshop held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2006. Participants mainly included government officials specialized in mining engineering, geology, and geochemistry. In the workshop, two kinds of simulation game were utilized. Participants discussed various problems during the games, such as the safety and health risks associated with small scale mining, as well as the risks of using cyanide and mercury. Following the discussions, participants were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of the simulation games with regard to using one of them at actual mining sites. The participants' evaluations were generally favorable, and their comments indicated additional factors for incorporation into future programs.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate seismic risk perception of lay people in Japan. We examine the risk perception on earthquake shaking by asking the rating scale of risk perception against seismic risk information on probabilistic seismic hazard map to explore how risk is perceived. Our results indicate that individuals tend to overestimate the degree of earthquake risk in near future, e.g., time period within 10 years. We examine the relation between the risk perception and several individual factors, such as gender, age and region, to explore how risk perceptions are affected by the factors. The results indicate that female risk perception is stronger than male, and younger people tend to overestimate the seismic risk exceeding about 10% probability and underestimate the risk less than about 10% probability compared to older people.

View full abstract

According to our study of “Public Risk Cognition of Pandemic Flu and Risk Communication” conducted in November 2008, we found that it's extremely important to understand how people recognize Pandemic Flu(H5N1 type) and which way of risk communication is required. As novel H1N1 flu(Swine flu) virus caused outbreaks in April 2009, it was proven that Japanese government's risk and crisis management response and risk communication strategy didn't work well. Fortunately H1N1 flu virus was as severe as seasonal influenza. However, learning from this time's H1N1 pandemic, we've found it urgent to consolidate Japanese government's risk communication strategy for the event of a second wave of H1N1 and prospective outbreaks of highly-virulent H5N1. Our study should give much valuable suggestions to planning of the strategy.

View full abstract