Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent a severe accident of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants challenged us about various issues to our academic society which set risk analysis issue as a main subject for research activities. Through extremely rare experiences, we are expected to conduct interdisciplinary activities to improve risk management for low probability and high consequence (LPHC) disasters. From these points of views, the author mainly describe four aspects, re-examination of definition of risks, decision-making system or governance for risk management among various stakeholders, some challenging approaches on better management for ‘beyond assumption’ events, and consideration of complementary relationship between risk management and crisis management.

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What is the relationship between web-based information on safety and the trust of railroad companies? This study investigated the effect of website information on the public’s trust of railroad companies. Two hundred and eighty-four adults were selected from internet users residing in the Tokyo Metropolitan area. Participants reviewed the company’s website for 10 minutes, looking specifically at the safety of public transportation, and rated the trustworthiness of railroad companies. The results showed that feelings of trust increased among the participants after viewing the websites for all target companies. Our results also suggested that most participants spent more time viewing the web pages on safety measures and on train service, and that this website information had positive effects on the trust in companies analyzed.

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The following observations are made concerning household insurance. It is often assumed that risk perception is the starting-point of the insurance demand formation process. Nevertheless, it is not necessarily the case that the actual insurance demand is formed as a result of risk perception. It involves weaknesses arising from rational thought and behavior.
In this paper, we used path analysis to empirically test the relationship between the formation of domestic life insurance demand and risk perception in the four separate categories of death security, old-age security, health security, and care security.
As a result, the following features were revealed. In the case of old-age security and care security, risk perception can be recognized as the starting-point for insurance demand. In the case of death security and health security, however, this is not necessarily the case.

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Before the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident, radionuclide like ¹³⁷Cs released from atmospheric nuclear detonation tests and the Chernobyl accident has been transported worldwide in the environment and finally taken up by humans through various pathways. In this research, dietary intake of ¹³⁷Cs and the health risks caused by prolonged radioactive global environment contamination were evaluated age-dependently for the reference Japanese since 1945 until 2010 by using the mathematical model for the evaluation of global distribution of ¹³⁷Cs with food ingestion and domestic and international food supply model. The model estimates were compared with the monitoring data of ¹³⁷Cs in Japanese total diet and ¹³⁷Cs concentration in food as an attempt at validation. The results of this evaluation would be useful for understanding the background situations without the Fukushima accident and give important information for the radiological health risk assessment of the accident.

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