Society 5.0, Digital Transformation and Disasters | Past, Present and Future

This book presents the evolution of the science technology paradigm in Japan and analyzes the critical community and local governance issues from the perspectives of the changing risk landscape, Society 5.0, and digital transformation. It also provides suggestions for the future development of a resilient society and community, by drawing lessons from other countries.

Advancements in science technology in recent decades in Japan and the world might have increased our capacity to tackle the adverse human consequences of various kinds of disasters and environmental issues. However, the accompanied and interlinking phenomena of urbanization, climate change, rural to urban migration, population decreases, and aged population have posed new challenges, especially in the small, medium-sized cities, and in rural areas of Japan. This is also enhanced by the risk of cascading, complex and systemic risk, which is defining a new normal as “living with uncertainties”.

Society 5.0 is defined as "A human-centered society that balances economic advancement with the resolution of social problems by a system that highly integrates cyberspace and physical space." Society 5.0 was proposed in the 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan as a future society that Japan should aspire to. Society 5.0 achieves a high degree of convergence between cyberspace (virtual space) and physical space (real space), compared with the past information society (Society 4.0) that people would access a cloud service (databases) in cyberspace via the Internet and search for, retrieve, and analyze information or data.

In Japan, in the initial stage, a great deal of confusion about the number of people infected with coronavirus occurred. Not only made it inefficient, but it did not produce the accurate data needed for critical decisions.

Japan may have unique disadvantages compared with other countries. Trying to drive digitization without thoroughly understanding these disadvantages and addressing them head-on will only lead to failed digital transformations.

With these three pillars of changing risk landscape, Society 5.0, and Digital transformation drive, the book will analyze the evolution of the science technology paradigm in Japan, will go deeper into the critical community and local governance issues, and will provide suggestions for future development of resilient society and community, by drawing lessons from overseas disaster risk reduction.

Sakiko Kanbara is a professor in the Faculty of Nursing, Kobe City College of Nursing. She is also the founder of EpiNurse Incorporated, which won the 2017 Risk Award at the Global Platform for United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction. She is mandated as a senior research fellow of the Psychic VR lab, and the advisor of MACHICARE,  start-up companies. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in health science from Kobe University and her Ph.D. from the Department of Public Health and International Health, Okayama University. She has earned her place as a researcher in developing new courses for global nursing and disaster nursing. She worked as an investigator of "the Center of Excellence for Disaster Nursing in Ubiquitous Society, the University of Hyogo" from 2006 and a professor of the Doctoral Degree Program for Disaster Nursing Global Leadership at the University of Kochi, Japan from 2012. Her research interests include primary healthcare, behavior science, and health informatics. Her team received many awards for innovation, including a participatory caring map after flooding in west Japan in 2018 that won Special Innovation Award from the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation Harvard Kennedy School, MetaNurse from Common ground  Challenge by WIRED. Rajib Shaw is a professor in the Graduate School of Media and Governance in Keio University, Japan. He is also a senior fellow of the Institute of Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) Japan, and the chairperson of the Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) Asia and the Church World Service (CWS) Japan, two Japanese NGOs. He is a co-founder of a Delhi (India)-based social entrepreneur startup, the Resilience Innovation Knowledge Academy (RIKA) and RIKA Institute. His expertise includes disaster governance, community-based disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, urban risk management, and disaster and environmental education. Professor Shaw is the co-chair of United Nations Asia Pacific Science Technology Academic Advisory Group (ASTAAG). He was also the Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) for the Asia chapter’s 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He is the editor-in-chief of the journal Progress in Disaster Science and series editor of a Springer book series on disaster risk reduction. Professor Shaw is the recipient of the prestigious “Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award (PBSA)” in 2021 for his contribution in education sector. PBSA is the highest honor conferred on overseas Indians and persons of Indian origin from the President of India. He is also the recipient of United Nations Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction in 2022 for his lifetime contributions in the field of disaster risk reduction.  Sasakawa Award is the highest UN award for disaster risk reduction and was established by 1986 by the founding Chairman of the Nippon Foundation, Mr. Ryoichi Sasakawa. Professor Shaw has published 61 books and over 400 academic papers and book chapters. 
 Naonori Kato is a researcher in KDDI Research, Inc. and an executive director of the Next Generation Fundamental Policy Research Institute (NFI). He is also a visiting associate professor at the Open University of Japan and a part-time lecturer at Kanagawa University. He graduated from the Faculty of Law, Niigata University, in 2009 and withdrew from the 5-year doctoral course of the Department of Informatics, the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in 2014. He has excellent experience in regulatory research of personal data not only in Japan but also in the EU and the US. He was a member of the working party to translate ISO 29100 (Privacy framework) into Japanese, funded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan. He also has excellent experience in consumer analysis. He was a researcher in the National Institute of Informaticsand NTT Docomo Mobile Society Research Institute. He has a master’s degree in informatics. He is also active in publishing papers, including journal papers and international conference papers. Hiroyuki Miyazaki received a B.A. in environmental information from Keio University, Kanagawa, Japan, in 2006, and M.E.S. and Ph.D. degrees in environmental studies from The University of Tokyo, Japan, in 2008 and 2011, respectively. From 2011 to 2012, he was a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Spatial Information Science, The University of Tokyo. Since 2012, he has been a researcher with the Earth Observation Data Integration and Fusion Research Initiative, The University of Tokyo, as well as a secondee at the Asian Development Bank, Philippines. In 2016, he was appointed as a project assistant professor with the Center for Spatial Information Science, The University of Tokyo, and was seconded to the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. His research interests include geospatial information science, satellite remote sensing for socioeconomic and applications to sustainable development. Since August 2021, he has been appointed as a technical advisor in GLODAL, Inc. and since June 2021 as the president to serve for R&D and HR development in space utilization, AI and IoT. Akira Morita is a professor emeritus of The University of Tokyo and a founder of the Next Generation Fundamental Policy Research Institute (NFI), which researches methods for policy formation using data. He graduated from the Faculty of Law, The University of Tokyo in 1976. He worked as a professor in the Faculty of Law and Economics, Chiba University, after which he was a professor at The University of Tokyo for Graduate School for Law and Politics, the Faculty of Law and Graduate School of Public Policy, of which he was Dean from 2004 to 2008. He was the first director of the Policy Alternatives Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, from 2008 to 2010. He also served as a chair of the Central Social Insurance Medical Council, a director of the Research and Development Center for Social Technology (RISTEX), Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), and the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, a professor of the Faculty of Policy Studies, Tsuda College, and a chair of the Council on Customs, Tariffs and Foreign Exchange, Ministry of Finance, from 2017.