In 2015, the Consumers Affairs Agency asked preparation of a systematic review in its introduction of functional foods labelling in the new Food Labelling Law. Although a guideline for systematic review preparation was released by the agency, the basic concepts of the systematic review is not clearly written in the guideline. In the same year, OHAT (Office of Health Assessment and Translation) of NTP (National Toxicology Program) published a handbook which describes principles and the process of developing a systematic review. Regulatory science which should have a strong basis on systematic reviews must stand on the totality of scientific evidence, however it must be reliable and feasible with regard to application of its output to actual decision making. Referring to the basic requirements for the regulatory science as the basis in the decision making process and practice, current applications of regulatory science, especially in the field of food safety were considered.

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We report the activity on the Regulatory Science Task Group (RSTG) in the Society for Risk Analysis Japan. RSTG organized several special sessions at the annual meeting of the Society as the following: searching the ground of standard value part 1 & 2; the essence of regulation governance; history of risk management; familiar but overlooked risk; regulatory science for chemical risk management. We collected 13 case studies from the papers in these sessions. The characteristics of the cases were analyzed using matrix analysis method. Ten items were used for the evaluation. The analysis revealed the typical characteristics of regulatory science for chemical risks and related fields.

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In our survey study, we aimed to explore collecting the basic findings on public risk awareness to product life-cycle of automobile relevant issues such as producing, use and waste. In preliminary survey, we selected 9 risks as the actually public concerned risk in automobile life-cycle. And in subsequent principle survey from 200 respondents in Osaka prefecture who were exposed relatively larger risks in Japan, we investigated risk awareness on each 9 risk, and intention of environment-consciousness behavior. Results showed that, firstly, familiar risks such as “road safety”, “noise and vibration” in use phase were evaluated more important than the unfamiliar risk appeared in producing or waste stage. Secondly, in 5 risks which exposed to general population, including a risk in producing phase, stronger risk awareness lead to stronger intention of environment-consciousness behavior. Our survey study found the respondents' priority of 9 risks and factors for promoting environment consciousness behavior.

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By employing structured interviews with 234 farmer groups, this study provides explanations for the low and decreasing demand among rice farmers for crop insurance in Indonesia, even though it is offered at a substantially subsidized premium. While it does not find price, income, or land ownership to be significant factors, this study points to the importance of non-price factors, such as subjective probability of loss among farmers, as well as ambiguity and trust. The findings provide insights into policy recommendations, including reassessment of an appropriate scale of loss eligible for the coverage and its corresponding premium, as well as understandability and transparency of the claim procedure and damage assessment. This study also examines the impact of public provision of information on farmers' decisions to purchase and renew the insurance. Furthermore, it indicates the importance of designing insurance as part of a broader risk management.

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The version 3 of the Atmospheric Dispersion Model for Exposure and Risk Management (ADMER) has been developed. The ADMER was previously designed to estimate the long-term average (monthly, annual and even more than several years) distribution of regional atmospheric concentrations of chemical substances and the exposure to populations. The new version of ADMER has been upgraded with several new features, such as short term average (4 h) analysis, worst case scenario analysis, and source-receptor analysis. It is anticipated that the new version of ADMER will spread the assessment of exposure and risk of accidental release of pollutants.

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