The fields addressed by this panel—civil engineering, architecture, disaster prevention, and environmental studies—are not merely domains that deal with technologies or structures. They are fundamentally connected to essential questions about how people live, how we relate to nature, and how we choose our future. Global-scale challenges such as climate change and increasingly severe natural disasters manifest as concrete choices and constraints within local environments. What is required today is not only the design of large-scale systems, but also the ability to re-examine our assumptions from the scale of everyday life and to envision new futures.

With this perspective, the panel welcomes challenges unconstrained by existing academic disciplines. The scope is not limited to advanced engineering; diverse approaches, including those grounded in the humanities and social sciences, are also within reach. What we value is the formation of essential questions about people and the environment, and the commitment to face those questions sincerely. Rather than short-term feasibility, we place greater emphasis on ideas that have the potential to redraw the map of knowledge for the future.

Emergent research is not a system designed to accumulate highly certain outcomes. We encourage you to take on attempts that question the very premises of existing frameworks rather than settling within them. Even if the concept entails significant risks, we expect you to confront the questions head-on with a long-term perspective and pursue the search for answers. The exploratory process—including hypothesis revision and trial and error—opens pathways to new knowledge. Long-term support provides the time needed to embrace such trial and error and to deepen research while continually refining your ideas. Through support from advisors and interactions with researchers across panel boundaries, we also hope you will relativize and broaden your own questions.

The free imagination and bold ideas of early-career researchers will shape the future forms of society and the environment. We are committed to accompanying you in that challenge.