This study empirically examined the effects of imagining refugee scenes on the preparative action against future disasters. A total of 147 undergraduate students and 77 elderly persons participated in the 3 experiments in which they were asked to choose one of two alternatives: preservable goods for use in case of disasters or a book coupon. The results of the experiments consistently showed that participants imagining refugees facing shortage of water and food did not affect their preference for preservable goods, indicative of the difficulties for enhancing behavioral preparedness. Implications of the current findings for disaster risk management in the future have been discussed.

We developed the model to estimate the concentrations of chemical substances in tap water under the assumption that accidental chemical releases in the upper stream of Yodo river caused by earthquake. The effectiveness of introducing an emergency shutoff valve in facilities by manufacturing sectors was analyzed in this study. The evaluated results showed that a facility with more than 1 ton of stock of chemical substances covered in tap water quality standard have to introduce an emergency shutoff valve. In addition, the effectiveness of applying water quality standards based on acute toxicity by water supply business was quantified for considering another standard for crisis only.

At processes of risk communication, it is important to capture the meanings of “safety”, which citizens use in everyday speech. In this study, I focused on the interpretations of safety and reassurance in dictionaries as everyday words, and comprehensively surveyed 18 representative dictionaries (60 when revisions are included) since the Meiji Period to summarize historical changes and current status of them. While reassurance was interpreted from psychological aspects in all the dictionaries, safety had two types of interpretations of the word. The first type of the interpretation contained psychological aspects. It could not be judged whether the second type of the interpretation included psychological aspects or not. There were no significant differences in uses of these types of interpretations in dictionaries between before the World War II and the present. This study highlights that the interpretations of safety are complex and differ among dictionaries.

The Society for Risk Analysis Japan held a training session in 2004 for the purpose of cultivating skillful risk communicators. The program was very useful to a person who has no experience of risk communication to learn the basics including the concept of risk communication, how to create contents and to present such communication. However, completion of this curriculum does not mean that the skill to actually execute risk communication on site is gained. Executing optimum risk communication should incorporate an appropriate design method based on systematic review. In this paper, by examining failed cases of risk communication, the importance of its design is confirmed. And the need for a training program that incorporates optimum design method is also discussed.