Silviase/jgov_v1.4_full_ann huggingface dataset:
by the Great East Japan Earthquake, dictate the formation of good-quality aseismic and eco-friendly real estate. To accelerate the introduction of private funds to finance the quake-proofing of buildings and the renewal of urban facilities, a Bill on Partial Amendments to the Real Estate Specified Joint Enterprise Act was just submitted to the 183rd session of the Diet, which authorizes special-purpose companies (SPC) fulfilling a certain set of requirements to conduct real estate specified joint enterprises.

Further, an aseismic and eco-friendly real estate formation and promotion project has been inaugurated to encourage the formation of good-quality real estate that possesses aseismic and environmental performance by leveraging private funds and know-how, with the government furnishing risk money to prime private investment in aged or untapped real estate, and to drive the implementation of community planning to make for regional rejuvenation and reactivation, including the renewal of station fronts to serve as regional cores, as well as for low-carbonization of existing stocks, such as office buildings.

Furthermore, the Environmental Real Estate Conference has been held as a forum of information exchange among market participants and brew common understandings to help form sustainable real estate stocks. Information has also been released through an environmental real estate portal site.

## 9 Reviving vitality of construction industry

## (1) The present situation of construction industry

Changes in construction investment, licensed contractors and number of employees are listed below (Graphic. II-6-314).

Graphic II-6-3-14 Changes in Construction Investment (Nominal), Licensed Contractors and Number of Employees

(Note) 1 Investment amounts are results up to FY2009, estimates for FY2010 and FY2011 and a forecast for FY2012.

2 The number of licensed contractors indicated is the value at the end of each fiscal year (end of March of the following year).

Source) MLIT “Construction Investment Estimates” and “Licensed Contractor Count Survey,” MIC “Labor Force Survey”
## (2) Debates on the materialization of policies designed to aid in rejuvenation and growth of the construction industry

The Conference on Construction Industry Strategy compiled “Policy 2011 for the Rejuvenation and Growth of the Construction Industry” in June 2011 and “Policy 2012 for Rejuvenation and Growth of the Construction Industry” in July 2012.

In a bid to build a robust construction industry capable of supporting regional futures and to assure the lasting quality of construction works, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism held Review Conference on the Acquisition and Development of Supporting Human Resources in September 2012 to debate policies relating to the acquisition and development of human resources, such as:

① Specialized contractor appraisal;

② Visualization of skilled construction workers;

③ Wider-spread acceptance of registered key technicians;

④ Education and training for skilled workers; and

## ⑤ Strategic publicity

and suggested a major course of action in March 2013. Further, the Council on the Utilization of Various Contract Methods was inaugurated in October 2012 to review, disseminate and publicize diverse contract methods so that the parties to a contract can smoothly choose the right contract method relevant to a new business need or to a specific project.

## (3) Establishing a framework of fair competition

To realize a state of competition that allows enterprises furnished with excellent engineering, construction and management capabilities to survive rapidly diminishing construction investment and even grow higher, establishing a framework of fair competition, including thorough compliance with governing laws and regulations by contractors, is important. To this end, the Ministry has been working to normalize the deals between prime contractors and subcontractors in the construction business by conducting subcontracting transaction status surveys, on-the-spot surveys, etc., opening a desk for consultation services on troubles, complaints and other problems encountered in concluding construction work contracts as “Construction Business Transaction Normalization Center” and collaborating with prefectural and municipal governments during the Construction Business Normalization Promotion Month (November).

## (4) Financial measures directed at the construction business

## ① Regional construction business management-incentive finance program

The regional construction business management-incentive finance program allows prime contractors to acquire loans from a cooperative association or a certain private entity on security of the public works contract price credit obligations, according to the completed amount of the works. Its purpose is to smooth their cash flow and ease their burden of interest payment.

This program is effective since November 2008 and its business period was stretched in February 2013 to the end of FY2013.

Source) MLIT
contractors by telephone or on a visit to support them in their efforts to implement their management strategies, such as deploying new projects, restructuring their management systems and closing businesses, in response to their requests submitted through the management strategy consultation desk. Support teams composed of such advisors and other personnel extended planning and other kinds of support to 46 of the all contractors seeking consultation. Partnership deals had been concluded with 33 prefectures and 330 banking institutions to build up the system of consultation support further.

## ② Promotion of construction-related businesses

Provisions for the exclusion of anti-social forces and toughened supervision and guidance in construction-related businesses (surveying, construction consulting and geological research) have been added in the construction consultant registration regulations and publicized on the Internet to ensure proper administration of the registration system and development and sound growth of good-quality construction-related businesses.

## (7) Present status of construction machinery and growth of construction production technologies

In FY2009, about 850,000 units of construction machinery $ ^{Note} $ were owned in Japan. By industry, about 44% of the construction machinery was purchased by the leasing and rental business and about 22% by the construction business.

About 15% of the industrial accidents involving deaths in the construction business were associated with construction machinery, etc. In recent years, the practice of safety management tends to get increasingly more laborious than before to integrate as the implementation of a multilayered work execution system progresses. To catch up with this trend, construction machinery work safety technology guidelines were updated and construction machinery work execution safety manuals formulated to pursue greater safety in the execution of works using construction machinery.

In addition, the Ministry, keen to resolve the various problems facing the construction business (such as low productivity, shortages of skilled labor and assurance of construction quality) and to promote the diffusion of the innovative ICT-based innovative technologies of construction, works to develop an environment between employers and contractors, by maintaining construction management standards and standardizing design data to clear up the problems that impede the widespread acceptance of these innovative technologies.

## (8) Settling disputes arising from the execution of construction works

To promptly resolve disputes arising from the execution of construction work contracts, the Construction Works Dispute Review Panel implements dispute settlement procedures. In FY2011, the Panel received 41 applications (five of arbitration, 30 for conciliation and six for mediation) at the central level and 123 applications (18 for arbitration, 86 for conciliation and 19 for mediation) at the prefectural level.
Column

# The effort of a smaller contractor to pursue rejuvenation by accommodating regional needs – Construction services business –

A smaller contractors founded in 1955 based in the intermediate and mountainous town of former Takebe (now consolidated into Okayama City), Osaka and Corp. has acted mainly in the field of public works project implementation.

In the red for the ninth consecutive term since 2001 under the influenced of recent cuts in the public works projects budget, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. In its desperate quest of survival, the company came up with a strategic solution of filling local needs by dismantling the generally accepted notion of a construction business that it won't accept small, odd jobs. In the spring of 2009, the company embarked on a construction services business that offers one-stop service solutions to whatever is annoying in the daily lives of the local residents, including sewage clogging, rain gutter cleanup, garden weeding and other odd jobs around housing, grave cleaning, facilitating water inflow into paddy fields and honeycomb removal. At the same time, a cost management software package was introduced to gain a field-specific insight to the status of day-to-day accounting to avert losses even from the execution of low-valued works.

The name of the company had been obscure to most of the approximately 6,000 residents of Takebe Town, except for those in some areas. The knowledge of the services gradually permeated the residents as a result of it strenuous marketing efforts to make it known, such as holding events to introduce jobs available from the company periodically to serve as a forum of resident exchange and circulating newspaper inserts monthly.

Gaining strength from its ties of mutual trust with the local residents formed by resolving their annoyances, the company began to take orders for relatively larger construction works, such as rebuilding graves and remodeling houses. Performance began to pick up slowly, to reinstate the company in the black for the third consecutive term in FY2012.

The company now pursues a scheme of readiness to fully address diversified, multiphased customer needs in the underserved fields of building remodeling and agriculture, among the construction services businesses, by taking advantage of

expert dispatch services available from the Management Strategy Advisory Project for Construction Firms administered by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

Amid tight public works project budget appropriations, the company's transition to seek its new sphere of activity in the field of private construction works, after its career out as a provider of solutions to the problems cherished by local residents, might be suggestive to smaller local contractors.

Source) Osakada Corp.

Repertoire of construction services handled

Source) Osakada Corp.
routing assistance to promote the support of pedestrian travel.

For this reason, a draft guideline implementable by local governments is being prepared for issues such as the maintenance and renewal of services to support pedestrian travel and rules for the distribution of costs between the public and private sector based on the knowledge gained from demonstration experiment projects carried out in five locations nationwide starting with Asahikawa City, Hokkaido.

Graphic II-7-1-3 Pedestrian Travel Support System Mechanism

Source) MLIT

## Section 2 Natural Disaster Measures

Japan’s national land is subject to severe conditions including climate, geography, and geology; almost every year natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, and sediment disasters occur. Even in 2012, a heavy rainstorm disaster in Kyushu that occurred in July led to massive damages several locations. Also, the importance of natural disaster measures is more urgent in consideration of climate change measures and the experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake, dilapidation measures and proactive disaster prevention and reduction measures must be fundamentally bolstered to solidly further infrastructure development urgently needed to protect the lives and living.

## 1 Shaping National Land that is Safe and Resilient to Disasters, Enhancing and Strengthening the Framework of Preparedness for Emergency Management

## (1) Responding to Climate Change

Regardless of the scale of countermeasures to deal with climate change and variability in the next 20 to 30 years, the temperature will rise and more frequent rains, stronger typhoons, rising sea levels, and an increased fluctuation range of rainfall are expected; counteractive measures to avoid or reduce the floods, sediment disasters, high tide disasters, droughts and other disasters as a result of this are needed. For the implementation of counteractive measures, relevant authorities must cooperate to develop mitigation facilities from a long-term viewpoint as well as measures for evacuation and disaster management to strive for a sustainable and resilient society.

## (2) Flood Measures

Many of Japan’s major cities are positioned on low-lying districts that are lower than the river level during flooding, making the latent danger of flood inundation quite high. Water control measures such as expanding the river channel to safely flush away floods, embankments, development of discharge channels, dams to temporarily hold back floods, and artificial ponds have steadily improved the degree of water control safety. However, in July of 2012, a rainstorm disaster in Kyushu caused a levee under the Yabe River’s area of direct administration to break, causing great damages in addition to floods and sediment disasters to occur, raising some new issues. In order to continue responding to major disasters appropriately, we will reaffirm the importance of lessons learned from the Great East Japan Earthquake, that is “there are no limits to disasters” and “human lives are most important” to appropriately combine hard and soft measures to further the prevention and reduction of disasters.
## ① Preventative Water Control Measures

The occurrence of large scale floods leads to human and economic losses, greatly affecting socioeconomic activities and because the recovery and reconstruction requires a great amount of time and resources, preventative water control measures are important to keep disaster from occurring. For this reason, water control facilities such as levees, excavating river channels, dams, and discharge channels are developed systematically. Also, existing facilities are being maximized with dam renovation technology such as the redevelopment of existing dams as well as restructuring the capacity of several existing dams. In addition, existing levees that are not sufficiently safe from permeative destruction or erosion due to floods are being strengthened.

Super levees are levees that do not break when floods exceed the planned scale; they are also integrated with town building projects and not only form a benevolent living environment that protects the lives of local residents but also lead to securing a wide area evacuation site. Also, following the comprehensive project reassessment of October 2010, the need for all super levees were reevaluated from zero with the greatest importance on “protecting human lives” and areas of need where narrowed to “areas with a concentration of population where a breaking levee has a high probability of causing great human losses.”

## ② Preventing the Reoccurrence of Flood Disasters

In recent years, at regions that experienced flooding, river channels are excavated and levees are being built to improve the flow capacity of rivers, drainage pump stations are developed to prevent inside water flooding among other measures are being implemented intensively in a short time span to relieve any concerns about flooding.

## ③ Flood Control Measures Tailored to River Basin Characteristics

For rivers that experience a significant decline in flood control safety due to river basin development or existing urban areas regularly subject to flood damages, it is important to ensure the water retention and flood dissipation functions of the river basin.

Source) MLIT "Flood Statistics Survey"

Graphic II-7-2-2 International Comparison of Flood Control Safety

Country	River Name	Flood Control Safety Goals(Note) 1	Coverage(Note) 2
United States of America	Mississippi River Downstream	Around 1/500(Note) 3	Around 94%(Note) 4
United Kingdom	Thames River	1/1,000(Note) 5	100%(Note) 5
Netherlands	The coast including the center of the nation	1/10,000(Note) 6	Around 94%(Note) 7
Japan	Arakawa River	1/200	Around 54%

Rivers such as these require the promotion of river basin measures and a variety of methods that taken into consideration regional characteristics to ensure safety and comfort.
the jetted sand it entails in paddies behind the levee aside from the broken sections. For this reason, a “Yabe River Levee Research Committee” was formed by academic experts to closely investigate the disaster mechanism. As a result, the breaking of the Yabe River levee was mainly the compound result of factors such as structure of the geological layer and external force of the flooding causing piping from the foundation ground.

Following the observation of various disaster types from the Kyushu heavy rainfall disaster, the safety against three disaster types by factor (① levee breaks caused by erosion, ② river bank denudation and bank protection damage, and ③ overflow disasters due to decline in flow capacity) were assessed as part of a complete emergency re-inspection for all domestic levees and the results were made widely available in September 2012.

The areas identified as requiring remedial measures among domestic rivers, starting with sections of higher emergency priority, underwent various measures such as drain works and seepage control work for erosion, foot protection work and bank protection work for denudation measures, and embanking and river channel excavation for flow capacity measures and these efforts will continue to be implemented.

Levee Break Condition of the Yabe River of the Yabe River System

Source) MLIT

Mechanism of the Levee Break and Emergency Measure Illustration

Source) MLIT
warning and evacuation system will be developed and in sediment-related disaster prone areas where sediment-related disaster can damage architectural structures and cause undue bodily harm to residents, certain development activities are restricted and there are additional structural requirements for architecture in addition to other soft measures. Also, guidelines and case studies are provided for the development of warning and evacuation system as well as the creation of hazard maps to further the development of warning and evacuation system as well as hazard maps against sediment-related disaster in the municipalities.

## (b) Prompting the Relocation of Housing at Risk

At risk housing located near cliffs in danger of collapsing are prompted to relocate using the program for relocating at risk housing located near cliffs. In FY 2012, this program was used to eliminate 22 at risk housing units and 16 housing units were created to replace at risk housing.

## ⑦ Countermeasures for Large Scale Sediment-related Disasters

So that municipalities can appropriately decide on directing resident evacuation under acute circumstances due to large scale sediment-related disasters such as river blocked (natural dams), debris flow from volcanic eruptions, and landslides, the “Sediment-related Disasters Prevention Law” revised in May 2011 was put into effect, an emergency survey was carried out by national government and prefectures in which the results were used to provide municipalities with the possible districts and timing among the land where sediment-related disasters are expected to ensure that the lives and health of national citizens are protected from sediment-related disasters.

Also, regarding deep catastrophic landslide, in September 2012 a map evaluating the risk of deep catastrophic landslide by mountain stream was published so that it could be used to deliberate countermeasure facilities as well as warning and evacuation measures.

## ⑧ Announcing Sediment-related Disaster Warning Information

When the risk of sediment-related disasters increases due to heavy rainfall, sediment-related disaster warning information is jointly issued by prefectures and the Japan Meteorological Agency and disseminated through the fire protection and disaster preparedness section of the prefecture to assist the head of the municipality with deciding on giving evacuation orders as well as allow residents to evacuate on their own.

## Graphic II-7-2-6 Sediment-related Disaster Warning Information

Source) Japan Meteorological Agency
## Column

## Efforts for countermeasure against deep catastrophic landslide

Deep catastrophic landslides are a phenomenon where a section of mountain terrain or hilly area's slope collapses at not only weathered topsoil layer but also the bedrock. Deep catastrophic landslides occur very rarely amongst sediment disasters but they usually collapse on a comparatively grander scale, such as the river channel blockage caused by the Iwate-Miyagi Nairiku Earthquake in 2008 or the one that occurred in Kii Peninsula following Severe Tropical Storm Talas in 2011, causing great damages so that there was a need to further investigate and research disaster prevention measures.

Therefore, in August 2010, a “Deep Catastrophic Landslide Estimated Frequency Map” based on statistical analysis of areas where deep c a t a s t r o p h i c landslide occurred and its relation to geographic and geological conditions; additionally, in September 2012, a “Deep Catastrophic Landslide Susceptibility Map (Small Catchment Level),” mainly

Source) MLIT

around regions where the estimated frequency of deep catastrophic landslide is especially high, indicating relative degree of danger of deep catastrophic land slide in districts where conditions such as geology are similar.

Future efforts regarding deep catastrophic landslide will involve the placement of sensors to detect the occurrence of large scale landslides to strengthen warning

Damages Due to a Landslide Caused by Deep Catastrophic Landslide (Gojo City, Nara Prefecture, September 2011)

Source) MLIT

Source) MLIT

and evacuation frameworks for deep catastrophic landslide mainly in regions where the estimated frequency of deep catastrophic landslide occurring is especially high on the deep catastrophic landslide. Estimated Frequency Map. In addition, a model district will be established to use the deep catastrophic landslide Mountain Stream Level Evaluation Map to establish things such as appropriate warning and evacuation frameworks including evacuation paths, areas, and methods as well as prioritization of measures in evaluating hard and soft measures against deep catastrophic landslide.