Published papers

国土交通省の支援の下に、筆者らが研究・開発してきた建築物総合環境性能評価システム（CASBEE）のうち、まちづくりを評価する手法を述べた。

 In recent years, Japanese businesses have been increasingly adopting the practice of environmental accounting, which is the reporting of the firm's environmental impacts in monetary terms. However, whereas private companies can make use of the Environmental Accounting Guidelines 2005 published by the Ministry of the Environment, no official environmental accounting guidelines have been provided by the government of Japan for public agencies, such as local governments. Thus, this study focused on Japanese municipalities, and proposed a unified methodology based on the endpoint-type LCIA method LIME2 (Life-Cycle Impact Assessment Method Based on Endpoint Modeling 2) for calculating the effects of environmental conservation, which is one item used by administrative divisions in Japan for environmental accounting. In a previous study, we conducted an annual environmental impact assessment of Japanese municipalities nationwide within the framework of LIME2. This study integrates the knowledge gained from that study with the basic tenets of the Environmental Accounting Guidelines 2005, and furthermore contributes unique ideas on interpreting the assessment results. The Environmental Accounting Guidelines 2005 state that the effects of environmental conservation should be calculated by subtracting the environmental load of base period from the environmental load of the current period. Accordingly, in this study the environmental conservation effect of a given administrative division was determined by taking the difference in the environmental impact assessment results of that municipality between two different years. In addition, two principles were proposed for assessing the location of environmental loads related to administrative divisions: territorial occurrence and territorial benefit. This study furthermore proposed that environmental loads from all Japanese municipalities expressed in monetary terms in accordance with LIME2 shall be called the "damage amount on environmental assets," and that local governments should take responsibility for reducing their damage amounts evenly. The assessment indicators for calculating environmental load were tentatively selected based on the inventories provided by LIME2 as well as the availability of statistical information at the municipal level. When the methodology was applied to the city of Yokohama, the total damage amounts for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015 were calculated as 96.1, 99.6, 97.6, and 97.2 billion yen, respectively, with the total environmental conservation effect over 15 years calculated as -1.07 billion yen. Because some LIME2 assessment categories are related to certain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations—including Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-Being), Goal 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), Goal 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), Goal 13 (Climate Action), and Goal 15 (Life On Land)—this study attempted to apply the assessment results of Yokohama to the framework of the SDGs. The results showed that the damage amounts related to Goals 9 and 15 decreased by 4.51 and 0.862 billion yen, respectively, and the damage amounts related to Goals 3, 12, and 13 increased by 5.58, 0.889, and 8.75 billion yen, respectively, over 15 years. These results indicate that the actual environmental loads of certain administrative divisions in Japan can be expressed in monetary terms, thereby providing primary knowledge necessary for developing standardized environmental accounting guidelines for Japanese municipalities.

This paper introduces a comprehensive assessment tool of the built environment of cities, referred to as "CASBEE-City". The tool supports local governments and other stakeholders in identifying environmental, social and economic characteristics of their cities and to quantify the effectiveness of city-led policies. As for the other CASBEE tools, CASBEE-City also implements the concept of environmental efficiency and allows evaluation of a city from two aspects simultaneously: the aspect of decreasing negative environmental load emitted outside the city, and that of improving environmental quality and activities inside the city. It is expected to contribute to the realization of sustainable cities.

Objective Over the course of their lives, people spend most of their time in the home environment. The Community-based Integrated Care System 2018 by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare in Japan declared the importance of "housing" and "living arrangements" as essential elements to enable older adults to live independently and to protect their privacy and dignity in their communities. The present study aims to clarify the relationship between current housing type and "housing" and "living arrangements" among older survivors of the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE).Methods We used data obtained from 3,856 participants, aged 65 years or older, in the Research project for prospective Investigation of health problems Among Survivors of the GEJE (RIAS). Housing types were categorized as follows: "same housing," "temporary housing," "disaster public housing," "new housing" (in a different area), and "others." Healthy housing scores were calculated using a housing health checklist from the Nationwide Smart Wellness Housing Survey in Japan. "Living arrangements" were assessed based on residential status, social network, and social capital. To determine the risks associated with each "housing" and "living arrangement" category, we used multivariate logistic and linear regression models.Results The number of participants in each housing type was as follows: 2,531 in "same housing," 146 in "temporary housing," 234 in "disaster public housing," 844 in "new housing," and 101 in "others." Compared with those living in "same housing," those living in "disaster public housing," "new housing," and "others" had a significantly higher healthy housing score, whereas those living in "temporary housing" had a lower score. However, with regards to "living arrangements," the number of residents who were living alone was significantly higher among those in "disaster public housing," and those living in "disaster public housing" as well as "new housing" had low social capital compared with those living in "same housing." The likelihood of having a poor social network was substantially higher for those living in "disaster public housing." Sub-scale analyses indicated that "disaster public housing" was associated with less family support, whereas "new housing" was associated with less support from friends.Conclusion The present results indicate that older survivors-regardless of whether they live in the existing community-find it challenging to establish new social capital and social networks in a new location without the presence of "someone" they knew before the disaster.

Indoor temperature environment and air quality affect the health of residents of houses, and thus efforts are underway to improve the insulation of houses. In this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey to investigate changes in health symptoms and quality of life after moving into a house with a central air conditioner, floor heating, and room air conditioners. The results revealed that residents of houses with central air conditioning tended to have a higher rate of improvement in health symptoms and quality of life compared with other types of air conditioning.

 In the environmental accounting of local governments in Japan, it is considered important to introduce the concept of eco-efficiency into the assessment of each industry and administrative division. Therefore, in this study, eco-efficiency assessment by industry was conducted uniformly for all Japanese municipalities based on two indicators: economic value and environmental load. For these, the respective indicators were gross regional product (GRP) and amount of environmental damage, as defined in a previous study. That study quantified annual environmental loads in Japanese municipalities within the framework of the endpoint-type life cycle impact assessment method "LIME2 (Life-Cycle Impact Assessment Method Based on Endpoint Modeling 2)". In this method, assessment results are calculated in monetary units called the "Eco-index Yen" (unit: Japanese yen) and environmental loads of several impact categories are integrated, such as "global warming" and "land use, " based on environmental conditions and knowledge unique to Japan. Another indicator, eco-efficiency, was defined as a division of monetary units (GRP divided by amount of environmental damage), as calculated for wide regions and individual municipalities in Japan in order to discuss their situation from the perspective of economics and the environment. Based on reliable, verifiable, and comparable statistical information, each index value was calculated for all industries throughout Japan in 2015: GRP was 2.28 million yen/capita, environmental damage was 32.6 thousand yen/capita, and eco-efficiency was 69.8. The assessment results of all municipalities were placed on a map to visualize the regionality of eco-efficiency, which revealed industry trends nationwide. For example, the eco-efficiency of "manufacturing" showed a trend that reflected the major local products in each area. The eco-efficiency value tended to be higher in areas that had active automobile and electronic component industries because these products produced relatively large benefits compared with their environmental loads. Next, the study focused on 21 large municipalities, including government-designated cities, located in representative urban areas in Japan. The results showed that the eco-efficiency of many industries in most of the 21 municipalities exceeded the national average. This suggests that the eco-efficiency of each industry tends to be higher in more densely populated cities in Japan. This hypothesis is potentially important for discussing "centralization of city functions" from the perspective of industry structure. Verification of this hypothesis will be investigated in the future. Taken together, these results indicate that it has become possible to quantify the real situation of each industry throughout Japan for both individual municipalities and regions. No studies to date have quantified the eco-efficiency of each industry in all Japanese municipalities monetarily and uniformly—this study is the first to provide an example from each industry throughout Japan in the field of environmental science.