Chisato Asahi

• Professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University

What kind of “discussions” is held by administrative councils, and are these of good “quality?” The Environmental Assessment Council (EAC) was established as an affiliate of the chief in many local governments. In environmental assessments, for large-scale development projects, the business operator predicts and evaluates its impact on the environm...

The challenges of a super-aging society with a decreasing population must be addressed if regional sustainability is to be ensured. The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development lists 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) covering a broad range of challenges. While education is the focus of one of the SDGs, the targets and indicators...

Social enterprises can be regarded as a new model of modern non-profit organisations (NPOs). They are working to challenge and untangle the various social obstacles we face today, such as issues relating to the environment, well-being, inequality of educational opportunities, and disparity in income distribution. Although prompt action must be take...

Local governments are promoting plans for the integration and reconstruction of public facilities. About 40% of the public facilities are made up of elementary and junior high school-related facilities. A school is a facility for implementing compulsory education services. Therefore, it can be said that there is little room to show the difference i...

For the sustainability of a region with a declining population, the maintenance, renewal, and operation of regional infrastructure and public services to make them sustainable have become an important issue against the background of a weakening regional economic structure and tight public finances. In recent years, the realization of multidimension...

There are three basic approaches to appraise the value of real estate: the cost approach, sales comparison approach, and income capitalisation approach. These approaches help ascertain the value of a certain real estate, and the values of each approach should match if applied appropriately. However, in real estate appraisal, the appraised value of...

This chapter investigates the possibility of ex-post risk management for local governments facing the risk of tap water pollution; this is still required to deal with the difficulty of prediction and urgency, even after the ex-ante risk management method has been introduced into the tap water quality management system. In Sect. 2.1, we categorize t...

Regional sustainability is an urgent issue in Japan, where population decline is rapidly progressing. An area cannot be maintained without urban facilities that support various activities. It is very difficult for an area with a population decline to maintain urban facilities because of the insufficient budget. However, needless to say, a budget is...

Japan has experienced a number of large-scale natural disasters, and social demand for effective infrastructure to manage risks related to these disasters is increasing under the constraint of public financial drought. In practice, benefits under risk only account for the expected value of the physical and human damages, and therefore, the integrat...

This chapter surveys the performance of social enterprises and examines how they solve various social problems. Social enterprises can be regarded as a new model of modern non-profit organisations (NPOs). They are working to challenge and untangle the various social obstacles we face today, such as issues relating to the environment and well-being,...

Social enterprises can be regarded as a new model of modern non-profit organisations （NPOs）. They are working to challenge and untangle the various social obstacles we face today, such as issues relating to the environment and well-being, the inequality of educational opportunities, and the disparity in income distribution. Although prompt action m...

This paper aims to survey the performance of organizations that support social enterprises and examine how they find their supporters. Social enterprises work to solve various challenges and social problems, such as issues related to the environment, social well-being, inequality in educational opportunities and disparity in income distributions. P...

Subsequent to the publication of Brundtland’s report on sustainable development, the number of books and papers which include the words ‘sustainable’ in their title has grown enormously. However, the very elasticity of the concept has given rise to questions about what it is supposed to mean: the sustainability of what, for whom, for how long, and...

In this chapter, the system of the provision of municipal water through the market mechanism including some forms of “privatizations” is considered in the view of the normative aspects of resource allocation and welfare under the uncertainty of water quality. First, the first and second fundamental theorems of welfare economics are reviewed and the...

In the supply of water, there is simultaneously a demand for maintenance of supply reliability from the viewpoint of public interest and a demand for efficiency against the backdrop of funding difficulty. In order to examine how these demands can be met through the use of market mechanisms and to identify the optimum replacement investment, mainten...

Until the 1970s, the majority of flood disasters occurred in the lowlands to the east of Tokyo. In recent years, however, with the increasing frequency of localized torrential downpours – referred to as ‘guerrilla rainstorms’ – locally concentrated, devastating damages have been suffered. With respect to measures against such damages, underground r...

The supply systems of various public goods are changing with differences in socioeconomic circumstances. However, it is necessary to clarify the relationships between the characters, non-excludability and non-competitiveness, of greenery as public goods and their supply to determine how supply and by which sector, public or private, these character...

Whether a natural event turns into a disaster depends on the severity of the hazard as well as the condition of the social sphere of its potential victims, i.e., vulnerability. We focus on regional vulnerability considering the fact that regional socioeconomic conditions determine the aspects of the damage and thus the risk management policy. This...

This paper aims to survey the performance of social enterprises and examine how they solve various social problems. Social enterprises can be regarded as a new model of modern nonprofit organizations. They work to challenge and solve the various social problems we face today, such as environmental and well-being issues, inequality of educational op...

Japan has experienced a number of large-scale disasters such as earthquakes and floods, so social demand for provisions, replacements and maintenance of infrastructures against the risks are requires. However, both national and regional governments have difficulties to finance the needs because of the rapid aging of society, increasing social secur...

Supply systems for various public goods change with changes in socioeconomic circumstances. Green spaces in urban areas such as parks and roadside greenery have various functions, including environmental preservation, landscape, recreation and disaster prevention. Recently, many cities try to increase green space in both public-owned and private-ow...

After the March 11 Tohoku Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Disaster, both the public and private sectors have been struggling in the recovery process. Globalization of economic activities has brought not only benefits to business but also many difficulties. Social enterprises can be regarded as a new model of modern nonprofit organizati...

In this study, we examined the effects of welfare and the measurement of social overhead capital for a household. In Japan, a decline in population and the structural straits of public finance give rise to difficulties in maintenance and replacement of social overhead capital that was invested during the period of high economic growth and the subse...

抄録 To make better decisions and justify the decision making process, it is essential to introduce participation procedures that are not only for reflection of diversity but also for avoidance of arbitrariness. Various studies must be accumulated for the effectiveness and efficiency of participation procedures. In the previous study, we discussed ‘...

The purpose of this study was to survey the International Solidarity Levy (ISL) and examine its effect on Development Funds. Globalization of economic activities brings about not only benefits but also much friction such as disparity in income distribution, financial crisis caused by speculative money and environmental issues. Prompt action must be...

In this paper, the reliability of a system to provide municipal water under risks of water quality and quantity is considered. We focus on two contexts of the system; one is a trend to introduce market mechanisms including some forms of “privatizations” because of pressure from public finance, and the other is the need to invest in maintenance and...

With a rapid decrease in the population of Japan, drastic changes in the allocation of scarce public resources appear to be needed to sustain regional economic growth. According to a series of new economic growth studies, the effects of improvements in labor productivity and R&D activities on growth has been examined by estimating the production fu...

The term ‘visualization' has been used in various fields of society in recent years. ‘Visualization' was originally used in fluidics and then in natural sciences, social sciences and human sciences. In the fields of evaluation and decision aids, ‘visualization' is required for accountability, transparency and freedom in information systems. However...

The Japanese government is making a major policy push to promote a recycling-based society that fully utilizes materials and improves waste recovery. It is therefore becoming increasing important for organizations to properly disclose information concerning their environmental initiatives and activities so consumers and investors will take such inf...

In our complex society, how to evaluate, how to fulfill accountability, and how to achieve agreement are problematic. Some methods have been developed as decision aids in the environmental sciences. However, these methods still can not adequately handle diversity, complexity and uncertainty. Up to now, we have studied the possibilities of using mul...

We estimate the consumption values of urban agglomeration economies and social overhead capital for Japanese metropolitan areas. Following the pioneering work of Tabuchi and Yoshida (2000), our approach exploits the fact that consumers tolerate higher living costs if they benefit from urban agglomeration economies and/or better social overhead capi...

In this paper, a system for the provision of municipal water through a market mechanism including some forms of "privatization" is considered in the view of the normative aspects of resource allocation and welfare under the uncertainty of water quality. The first and second fundamental theorems of welfare economics are reviewed and cases when the m...

Evaluation is necessary in implementation of any project or policy, including those related to environmental problems. In our complex society, how to evaluate, how to fulfill accountability, and how to achieve agreement are problematic. In the environmental sciences, some methods have already been developed as decision aids. However, these methods...

Evaluation is necessary before implementing any projects or policies, including those in environmental science. To evaluate project or policies, citizens' viewpoints are essential. However, citizens are diverse because our society has become more complex in recent years. Therefore, how to evaluate, how to satisfy the required level of accountabilit...

Marginal willingness to pay for public investment under urban environmental risk is considered in this paper. In particular, we present a model that takes into account a bounded rationality on the ability of risk perception, the information situation, and people's threshold acceptance of risk. A case study of the evaluation of risk in municipal wat...

This study provides ex post risk management system on municipal water, which is faced with stochastic environmental contamination. Water contamination is caused by, for example, detrimental organic compound derived from soil and underground water and germ from stockbreeding. We have difficulty in predicting occurrences, probabilities and severity o...

Water contamination risk has become more complicated and more uncertain. The difficulty of specifying the causality between water contamination and its sources makes it hard for the water service authorities to manage the risk; where the safety level of water quality should be set and how much should be spent for the risk reduction. Our paper focus...

In urban areas, people face various kinds of environmental risks. We have to know the economic value of the risks properly when we implement public investment that may cause the environmental damage.In this paper, we review the General Preference Index Model, a derivative from the Substitution Model of Choice and Value for evaluating environmental...

In urban area, people face various kinds of environmental risk as a result of such activity as consumption, production, and their interaction. The characteristics of environmental risk are uncertainty about the environmental damage, the probability it occurs, its severity, and non-reversal effect it causes. To deal with environmental risk properly,...