In this paper, I considered the novel coronavirus pandemic as general as possible from the aspects of emerging risks and the relationship between science and policy. For the former, it was proposed to institutionalize mechanisms such as national risk assessments carried out in other countries, and for the latter, to visualize the process from scientific facts to the determination of risk management measures. In addition, responding to the novel coronavirus requires the involvement of experts not only from a medical point of view, but also from a behavioral point of view.

It is required to make risk education popular to improve risk literacy of citizens. Although several kinds of risk education programs have been developed, the effect of the education by those should be evaluated and the method to measure risk literacy was not established. Therefore, measurement scales of the risk literacy have been developed through web-based questionnaire research. As the result, measurement scales have been established consisting of six factors; zero-risk bias, trade-off on risk versus benefit, trade-off on risk versus risk, paradox on risk perception, basic knowledge on risk and risk perception bias. The scales consisted of four questions for each factor express the factors well. The scales are thought to be useful for improving risk education program and risk communication.

The objective of this study is reveal the factors concerning the municipal officials who are in charge of disaster waste management. In this study, the questionnaire survey on information relevant to disaster waste management was carried out. Using the factor analysis, potential factors related ownership of municipal officials in disaster waste management were examined. As a result, seven factors were extracted. In addition, path diagrams were pointed out that knowledge through taking seminar or short course increases the self-efficiency for disaster waste management, but does not necessarily increase the interest in disaster debris management planning and the ownership for safety and security of citizen in disaster. On the other hand, knowledge and awareness through both taking seminar or short course and having training or workshop make the municipal officials to increase the ownership for safety and security of citizen effectively.

Antimony and its compounds which are considered as carcinogenic substance have been used as friction material and flame-retardants. Nowadays, according to manufacturing company’s self-regulation, antimony used in brake pad has been replaced by an alternative substance. However, only few researchers have studied atmospheric concentration of antimony and assessed impact on human health after substitution. Therefore, in connection to the concept of information updating relevant to exposure and risk analysis, we performed exposure analysis for and its substitute scenario for human health risks from brake pad for Kanto area and clarified the remarkable reduction of antimony exposure. Sensitive analysis concludes that further studies to grasp more accurate parameters of brake pad prices and antimony contents ratio in brake pad could reduce uncertainties of future evaluations.

Image association influences the public’s risk perception. Several studies have investigated these associated images such as on nuclear waste repositories. It has also been reported that image association factor has a significant impact on the perceived risk of health effects of radioactive substances in food released from the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident. The objective of this study was to identify the associated images of that and their origins. The survey was conducted employing focus group interviews in Japan and France, in which the participants were asked to present and describe the pictures representing their risk images. Relatively similar findings were obtained in both countries. Serious image categories (such as ‘severe health effects’, ‘fear of the invisible’, ‘spreading and accumulation’, ‘heightened dread and despair’) and their origins (visual media concerning the victims of atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as seen during childhood) were identified. For the Japanese case it was found that the effect of the Fukushima accident with low-dose exposure was perceived as extremely serious image and that the image was evoked from the memories of high dose exposure in the past. The cognitive mechanisms and some implications for risk communication were discussed.