Messages from Departments and Centers of NILIM

Establishment of a new research center
KOBAYASHI Masanori, Director
Research Center for Land and Construction Management(Key words) Disaster prevention, maintenance, building construction management, information infrastructure,landscape ,ecology

1. New research center
On April 1, 2014, the Research Center for Land andConstruction Management will begin operating as anew organization inside the NILIM. Originally,
research centers of the NILIM were established toconduct interdisciplinary research on rivers, roads,
buildings and other areas. Until this year, there werethree research centers at the NIILM: the ResearchCenter for Land and Construction Management,
Research Center for Advanced Information
Technology, and Research Center for Disaster
Management. The three research centers will beabandoned, then the new research center will beestablished to organize the contents to be addressed byan interdisciplinary method, to respond to changes insocial conditions and meet the expectations of thepeople concerning the development of infrastructures,including the preparation for disaster prevention anddisaster mitigation in response to Great East Japan
Earthquake, the importance of maintaining
infrastructure in response to the Sasago Tunnel
accident, and the effective form of constructionsystems , such as the information infrastructure andpublic procurement etc that supports theseinfrastructures.
Thus, its configuration will be diverse, a largeorganization including 6 divisions: the Construction
System Division, Construction Economics Division,
Construction
Management
Division,
DisasterPrevention Division, Maintenance and Information
Technology Division, and Landscape and Ecology
Division. It will be led by a Center Head and three
Research Coordinators.
2. Scope of the new research center(1) Disaster prevention related
Disaster prevention related research is undertaken
by several departments; flooding by the River
Department, sediment disasters by the Sabo
Department etc. There are , however, issues that spanvarious disciplines; Disaster Prevention Division willconduct research on such issues including preparation
for the Nankai Trough Earthquake or the Tokyo
Metropolitan Earthquake and accompanying tsunami.
For example, immediate damage estimation
technology will be developed to support the initial

responses of facility to administrators shortly after anearthquake, when there is little information on thedamage to facilities. In addition, earthquake motion
information will be collected from strong motion
observation facilities installed at civil engineeringstructures such as river levees or bridges throughout
Japan. The information will then be stored andmanaged in a database and provided upon request.
These data are also used for research on design
earthquake motion.
(2) Maintenance related
While facing many problems including thedeterioration of public capital facilities, falling birthrate and aging of society, growing shortage oftechnicians, and financial restrictions, continuing
appropriate maintenance of public capital will be
important for Japan in the future. Research on
individual technologies used for maintenance will bedone by departments specializing in various
disciplines, but the new Research Center will aim toabstract and organize common evaluation mattersrelated to stock management in order to be able tocontinue the PDCA cycle of maintenance related to“Research on Methods of Improving Sustainability ofMaintenance Including the Perspective of Risk
Management”, which will began as new project
research in 2014 under the leadership of the Research
Coordinator for Construction Management.
In addition, maintenance related research will also
be conducted in the Maintenance and Information
Technology Division and the Landscape and Ecology
Division.
(3) Civil construction system related
The new research center will be called the ResearchCenter for Land and Construction Management, butanother major activity of the center will be research on
civil construction systems Procurement methods
change along with changing social conditions, and it isnecessary to organize systems to reflect the current
social background. Estimation has changed as totaling
based on productivity has been replaced by theexecution package method based on execution units.
The tendering system has also changed from theinvitational tender method to the more competitive
open tender method. To prevent the negative effect ofcompetition based on the price only approach, the Act

on Promoting Quality Assurance in Public Works(Quality Assurance Act) has come into force,
permitting the application of the Overall Evaluation
Method, which evaluates both price and technicalquality . At the same time, a variety of issues oftendering for maintenance have recently been raised.
For reasons such as this, the Construction System
Division will conduct research on estimation methods
for maintenance work, an area in which serious
challenges have appeared: expanding and following up
execution package work categories for more efficientestimation, speeding up change of execution methods
to keep pace with technology development by
increasingly diverse execution conditions andexecution contents, rationalizing estimations orreducing labor required for estimations.
The Construction Management Division will
perform research on tendering and contracting systems,
for example, on the improvement of Quality and Cost
Based Selection, in which issues have appeared in theperiod since it was introduced, or on design build(DB) or construction management (CM) etc.
But because of inadequate understanding of public
capital, there is a deep rooted disbelief in the necessityof public works among the people. The Construction
Economics Division will, therefore, study methods ofeffective expression in order to clarify and reveal ineasily understood terms the latent roles andeffectiveness of providing and managing public capitalin various aspects of the lives of the people.
(4) Information infrastructure related
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport andTourism collects information to be shared fromdatabases in various fields, in order to build a public
capital information platform that facilitates the prompt,interdisciplinary use of information. This platformwould be useful for improving efficiency in facility
management, and providing facility information in theevent of a disaster.
As well as supporting the development of thisinformation platform, the Maintenance andInformation Technology Division conducts researchon information infrastructure for GIS, roadcommunication standards and so on, where
information necessary for national land management
can be accumulated and managed efficiently, so it canbe shared across various application fields . Also, thedivision has been working on standardizing 3D design
data, so it can be utilized in construction management
using a total station, as well as in computerizedexecution. In parallel, they continue to research
applications in facility management, and to measure
the degree of distortion and deformation of structures
after being struck by a disaster such as an earthquake.
(5) Landscape and ecology related
When people hear “public capital maintenance”
they tend to imagine bridges, tunnels, sewage

treatment systems, dams, sluice gates and other civilengineering structures, but it is also necessary for
urban green trees, along streets, in parks, andelsewhere. Consideration for biodiversity, necessary
when providing public capital is, in a certain sense,maintenance of the ecosystem.
The Landscape and Ecology Division aims to set
evaluation criteria to reconsider revegetation policies
and to establish conservation and reclamation methods
required by this policy, so that roadside trees withmaintenance problems can fulfill their greenery
function. And it will also research the conservation ofecosystems and of greenery.
3. Conclusions
Organizations must change to keep pace withchanging social conditions. For this reason, we arecarrying out a sweeping reorganization including thisresearch center.
So no one will say that this is just a change ofnames or a change of affiliation, we wish to continue
to conduct research that society demands to meet theexpectations of the people, including past initiatives
and new initiatives, so please give the new ResearchCenter for Land and Construction Management yourfull support.