This paper reviews key principles of modern risk management and governance, with a focus on situations characterised by large uncertainties. Current ideas and strategies are discussed, covering the use of both risk assessments and cautionary/precautionary (robust, resilient)-based thinking. The paper is based on recent advances in risk science.

With cloud computing, the Internet of things, wireless sensors, social networks, fast storage, and retrieval as such, organizations and companies have access to unprecedented amounts and types of data. The methodology and application of current risk analysis are experiencing related advances and progress. For example, massive data of financial and enterprise systems support decision making under risk by individuals, industries, regulators. In this paper, the authors first discuss the meaning of big data for risk analysis. One highlight in this section is the latest Google Scholar search results showing the publication trends in big data, data science, and risk-related research. The authors then shift the discussion to the five presentations delivered in the Risk Computing organized session in SRA Asia Conference 2018. The authors conclude with a discussion on future research opportunities in risk computing.

Achievements with great social impact by business person will be extremely rich field concerning searching research subject and/or implementation of research outcome for various areas. Nevertheless, opportunity for sharing such achievements with general society and also with research community will be rather limited. In this session, presenters from electric and electronic industry, consultant business and banking industry will present such prominent episodes and we will discuss on common ground between such achievements and risk analysis.

Health impact caused by the 2011 Fukushima Nuclear Accident was not limited to that by radiation exposure. It included abandonment of evacuees, collapse of local healthcare system, health problems among decontamination workers with low socio-economic status, and mental issues. We also have health problems that seems common across the world, such as health deterioration due to long-term dislocation, and impact on the well-being of children. Through risk communication, we can get a holistic view of health risks not only in disaster settings but also in our daily life. Such a view may help us ‘optimize’ our health risks based on our own sense of value.

This session addresses how to manage emerging risk. Emerging risk is a new risk in an unfamiliar situation. This session seeks common sense handling of emerging risk beyond the academic field. The session consists of four presenters. They are representatives from four academic associations: Japanese Insurance Conference, Japan Society on Water Environment, Japan Society for Disaster Information Studies, and Japan Society for Safety Engineering. The common viewpoint of each presentation is the difficulty in evaluating the effects of risk management and quantifying emerging risk.

In this study, to comprehend consumer exposure characteristics of DMF (N,N-Dimethylformamide) and 2E1H (2-Ethyl-1-hexanol) emitted from EVA (Ethylene-vinylacetate) resin mats, we applied prediction models of TRA, ConsExpo, IH MOD/SkinPerm to their inhalation and dermal exposure. Weight fraction of target substances in products are very important for exposure estimation but mostly unknown. We assumed to set 0.1–1% to them and verified the adequacy by experimental emission rate and model fitting. Exposure predictions suggested that setting new EVA resin mats has initially major impacts to indoor air environment. Dermal exposure was not also negligible as exposure route. ConsExpo would not be applicable to substances having high dermal deposition rate and low K_ow (Octanol/water partition coefficient) by only selecting default values of layer thickness. It would be necessary to modify its dermal prediction equation. Mass transfer coefficient was not a sensitive parameter for ConsExpo. Sparks method increased only 20–32% of mean event concentration as compared to flat plate method.

People often regard their values as absolute and try to protect them from trade-offs with other values. These protected values (PVs) may make it difficult to build a regional consensus around risk acceptance. We hypothesized that people with PVs who refuse risk-taking for public policy have an illusion of understanding in that they know less about the policy than they think they do. Focusing on the issue of the construct of a disposal facility of high level radioactive waste, this study examined the effects of providing reflective opportunity regarding the impacts of the facility on the changes in PVs and self-assessments of their own understanding. It was shown that both the tendency to hold PVs and self-assessments of their own understanding decreased through the experimental work. The result indicated that strong attitudes of PVs tended to be moderate as they became to understand that they didn’t understand the policy.

The recent advancement in new biotechnology—namely genome editing tools—has prompted excitement in research and development community and allowed a lot of application in the field of food and agriculture to be developed. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the potential governance challenges posed by this new emerging biotechnology and to present the needed policy measures with particular focus on Japanese context. For that purpose, we identified challenges in regulation, research and development and social acceptance. We then explored the desirable recommendations on measures to be taken in terms of (1) horizon scanning, (2) foresight, (3) technology assessment, safety assessment and regulatory gap analysis, and (4) risk communication.