Creating a Safe and Secure Living Environment in the Changing Public and Private Spheres (FY2015-2022)

Program Supervisor

YAMADA Hajime

Emeritus Professor, Toyo University/Chair of the Board, Information Communication Policy Forum

In recent years in Japan, the number of officially recognized crimes has declined. On the other hand, cases where victims experience ongoing violence in places such as home, workplace or school, as well as bullying and criminal events

deriving from relationships in cyberspace, have come to the fore and become a new type of problems especially in terms of safety and security in the society. Also, while there is a decline in accidents which occur in public spaces such as traffic accidents, there is an increasing number of domestic accidents such as falls and drowning. In such cases, problems are manifesting themselves in private spaces and relationships which are hard to discover or intervene in from the outside.

The background for why these problems are becoming apparent involves changes in social structure--such as smaller and older households, isolation of individuals from the local community, dissemination/growth of the Internet and social media, and the transformation of private and public spheres brought on by such changes. Also the inability of existing safety functions (prevention/support functions provided by the legal system, public agencies, households and the local community) to fully cope with these changes may play a part. The conventional approach was to leave the private sphere to self-help and self-determination, but there are rising public concern and awareness of human rights, and social support and intervention are gradually expanding at a variety of levels. A need has arisen for R&D to contribute to early discovery and solution of the primary causes of harm infliction/victimization in the private sphere, and the associated risks, by using science and technology such as sensors and robots. From the perspective of social support, the relationship between the private and public spheres is changing.

On the other hand, there are also cases where institutions such as the legal system act as a barrier to providing social support.

Furthermore, there is progress in the transformation toward realization of a more desirable super-cyber society and the integration of cyberspace and real-world space, as indicated in the discussions for the 5th Science and Technology Basic Plan by the Council for Science and Technology of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). This process in the policy has a strong relationship with changes in personal space, relationships and concepts of privacy. At the same time, it is expected that, from the technological side, approaches such as using big data analysis technology will facilitate the prediction and discovery of incidents and accidents, etc.

Therefore, in this R&D focus area, we are promoting R&D to contribute, through public/personal cooperation, to the discovery of harms and accidents in spaces/relationships which are difficult to discover or intervene in, and to the creation of mechanisms and associated activities which enable reduction and prevention of such problems by prediction, intervention and aftercare.

Goals

 Specific goals in this focus area are as follows:
(1) To propose new methods to contribute to the reduction and prevention of harms and accidents by prediction, intervention and aftercare in spaces and relationships which are difficult to discover and intervene in. These new methods will be proposed based on actual problems and needs brought on by the trend toward smaller and older households, and the transformation of the private sphere due to the expansion of cyberspace.
(2) To derive and propose systems and policies for reducing harms and accidents in difficult-to-find or hard-to-intervene spaces and relationships from the R&D results. The feasibility of proposed systems will also be presented.
(3) To build a network for sharing ideas and approaches relating to adoption of these methods, aiming to ensure that the presented efforts and measures are continually implemented in order to integrate them with social systems,.

Message from the Area Director

As structural changes occur in society, such as the trend toward smaller and older households with fewer children, isolation of individuals from the local community, and dissemination of social media, there is an increasing number of incidents and accidents in personal spaces and relationships. " Creating a Safe and Secure Living Environment in the Changing Public and Private Spheres " is a new R&D focus area started in fiscal 2015 based on an awareness of the issue of these incidents and accidents.

R&D is being conducted on specific events such as Cyberbullying or abuse, and many results have been accumulated. However, there has not really been active cross-sectional R&D which might find the background of these various events, common points of remedial measures, and shared institutional problems which hinder remediation. In addition, even if measures are possible from the standpoint of the legal system, customary practices at the location, or the mindsets of people that nothing can really be done may interfere with the creation of safer living. In cases of child abuse, the reason why close collaboration between child consultation centers and the police does not adequately move forward may be because there are institutional bottlenecks in the respective organizations. Many events which occur in personal relationships and spaces are sensitive, and thus there is a need to protect personal information. On the other hand, there may be a need to share personal information between many involved parties.

Taking such issues into consideration, in this focus area we place public and personal at two ends of the spectrum, focus on the role played by the "margin" between those extremes, and attempt to create new approaches for public/personal cooperation in this "margin." Key R&D topics are how to appropriately intervene while taking privacy into account, and what sort of function should be assigned to the "margin." We expect to see progress in R&D on various direct and indirect approaches in the " margin " such as daily life monitoring with information and communications technology, casual verbal interaction between neighboring residents, and information sharing between involved persons, and this should contribute to the creation of safe living.

R&D Projects

FY2017

Building a support system based on "people - community - society" to raise awareness of trauma
OOKA Yuuka
(Associate Professor, Department of psychology and social welfare, Mukogawa Women's University)

2017.10-2021.3

Establishing the support models for adolescents and adults with developmental disorders using application softwares
TSUJII Masatsugu
(Professor, Faculty of Sociology, Chukyo University)

2017.10-2021.3

Social Development of Online-Risk Reduction Systems for Minors
TORIUMI Fujio
(Professor, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo)

2017.10-2021.3

Activation of community patrol by fostering coordinators of watching over elderly people
MURAI Yuichi
(Professor, Department of Social Welfare, DEN-EN CHOFU University)

2017.10-2021.3

Research and Development of a flexible Community Cooperation Model Preventing the Elderly from Becoming Involved in Fraud Cases
WATANABE Satoshi
(Professor, Research and Education Center for Comprehensive Science, Akita Prefectural University)

2017.10-2021.3

FY2016

Implementation of Recovery Circle in Japanese Society for a variety of Addiction Behaviors
ISHIZUKA Shinichi
(Professor, Faculty of Law, Ryukoku University)

2016.10-2022.3

Research and Development of Public-Private Connected Caring Model Respond to Multiple Help-Longing in Urban Environment
SHIMAZONO Susumu
(Director, Institute of Grief Care, Sophia University)

2016.10-2020.3

Development of supporting system for pregnant women to prevent child abuse and domestic violence
FUJIWARA Takeo
(Professor, Global Health Promotion, Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU))

2016.10-2020.3

FY2015

Research and policy of parental support systems to prevent child maltreatment
KURODA Kumi
(Team Leader, Laboratory for Affiliative Social Behavior, RIKEN Center for Brain Science)
TOMODA Akemi
(Professor, Research Center for Child Mental Development, University of Fukui)

KURODA Kumi : 2015.11-2018.12
TOMODA Akemi : 2018.12-2021.3

Promotion of Mult‐i Agency Cooperation by Visualization of the Police Intervention Process in Criminal Cases in Homes and Schools
TAMURA Masahiro
(Director, Institute for Criminal Justice, Kyoto Sangyo University)

2015.11-2019.3

Development and Provision of a Training Program to Foster the Use of Forensic Interviews by Multidisciplinary Team
NAKA Makiko
(Professor, College of Comprehensive Psychology, Ritsumeikan University)

2015.11-2020.3

Developing social network for safe and autonomous economic activities of older people
OGANO Shoichi
(Professor, Faculty of Law, Chuo University)

2015.11-2019.3

Development of prevention and early-intervention system for child maltreatment using the database of nationwide survey
MORITA Nobuaki
(Associate professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba)

2015.11-2019.3
Top page