This article is concerned with the outcome of “Symposium on the 2011 East Japan Great Disaster and Fukushima Nuclear Reactor Accident” organized by SRA Japan, focusing on the issue of “Beyond the Scope of Risk Analysis Framework” against “Low-Probability High-Consequence (LPHC) Risk Event”. The arguments and comments provided by four discussants are summarized in terms of “risk governance deficit” toward revisit of traditional “Risk Analysis Framework” for the LPHC type of disasters.

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The concept of “SOUTEI” or “Assumption” is commonly used to set target levels (or boundary conditions) in the fields of engineering in order to design apparatus, devices, or industrial systems. However, after the Great East-Japan Earthquake and its dreadful consequences of the Fukushima Atomic Power Plant, the term “beyond the scope of assumption” has often been misconstrued by the people and the authorities concerned. The study aims to clarify the points at issue, discussing the following problem areas from the risk assessment.
(1) Causes of misinterpretation
(2) Types of misinterpretation
(3) How to set the target levels for assumption
(4) Risk management of the assumption plan, and accommodating behavior in case the assumption plan fails
(5) People who are opposed to the method of assumption
(6) Meaningless assumption
(7) The philosophy of an assumption and it’s cultural background

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In this paper, I summarized the viewpoint of low probability high consequence risk to large scale complex disasters. Based on the framework of risk comparison, chemical substance, natural disasters and nuclear power generation were tabulated from the viewpoint of key concept of risk analysis. Then I summarized the characteristics of risk perception for these technologies and finally I discussed the requisites of the capacity building for handling these types of risks.

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Inadequacy, irrelevance, and deficits in risk governance are observed in the adverse impacts or inexpediencies arisen secondarily from rebuilding planning and practices beyond huge disaster damages of the 3.11. The author, using the policy guide of IRGC(International Risk Governance Council, 2009) for more efficient, transparent, equitable risk governance, reviews and appraises the target setting, option design, decisionmaking, and implementation of rebuilding actions in Sanriku and Fukushima communities by government sectors. The practitioners seem to fail to understand social cost of single-cut symbolic projects and be liable to continue working those such as in community relocation to uplands far from fishery operation sites, reconstruction of coastal levee system with higher level but without more resiliency, decontamination of community environment polluted by radiation and so on. There are many lessons concerning deficits in the 3.11 case which should be tackled by suitable actions for better risk governance, introduced in the IRGC guide, in which IRGC has pointed out the relevant actions of responding to early-warning, designing effective and equitable risk management strategy, preparing reasonable range of policy alternatives, and implementing policies with developed tools and capacities for good risk management.

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In holonomical considerations what should we draw out lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake? In this paper, I discuss two critical points, one is for layman, other for mechanical engineers. Japanese people had believed that a specialist may rescue themselves from disasters always in time. In a wide disaster, however, a person in the first place, tries to work out one’s salvation by one’s own efforts. But many people failed to adapt themselves to the critical circumstances. Usually, experts and professionals are easily apt to part separately as a specialist, severely and not seriously from the whole. Best in the parts can’t be so also in the whole. How should we conquer such a narrow prejudice as a specialist? That’s our holonomist’s fundamental subject !

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In Japan, the Soil Contamination Countermeasure Law was established in 2003 for the protection of human health. This law, as a countermeasure method, admits the inexpensive risk management method with leaving the contamination, as well as expensive cleans up. However decision makers of countermeasure method who were mainly developers and industrial companies, were often select the expensive cleans up method in many cases. As a result, economic problems have arisen by soil contamination in Japan. In this paper, the concept of the law was explained and the reason why people select the expensive cleans up were discussed, and then, the gaps between the objectives of the law and people’s decision making processes were identified. Finally, several suggestions were made for the harmonization of the environmental risk and economic risk related with soil contamination.

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To evaluate and compare the risk of substitution, we have done practical application study with the illustration of flame retardants based on the risk expressed as a product of damage factor (DF) and daily intake. DF is calculated based on DALY, which is one of the outcomes of the “Global Burden of Disease” conducted by WHO, and NOAEL. We adopted this method featuring flame retardant in TV enclosures, and verified that substituting Triphenylphosphate (TPP) for Decabromodiphenyloxide (DecaBDE) can reduce the risk significantly. This method is different from conventional risk evaluation method in the way that; it is able to considerate severities of the case of risk emergence, and to calculate risk values separately according to application.

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The purpose of this study is to identify structural model of food related risk perception by Structural Equation Modeling. In a preliminary study, we reinvestigated the factors that influence on the perceived magnitude of risks with laddering method survey in Japan, Korea and U.S., and established a hypothesis on the structural model of public risk perception. In this study, data were collected in Japan (N=1,185) with the questionnaire we developed. As a result, the fit indexes of the structural models of 5 hazards were good. This models were composed of 3 categories of factors; perceived risk/hazard characteristics (graveness of health injury, accumulation in body and delay of effects, difficulty of control and avoidance, benefits), perceived personal factors (knowledge, conjures images) and perceived social factors (information exposure, trust for regulatory measures, experts and business operators). Information exposure and conjures images have a impact in enhancing perception of graveness of health injury and magnitude of risk.

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