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Risk management consists of a series of actions to list out all possible risks, evaluate their influences, and reduce or avoid the losses. We hear the term “risk management” in a number of fields including finance, corporate management, safety of machine systems, accident prevention, and natural disasters. The fields, however, have different concepts and understanding of its controllability associated with the term. In most fields, risk is pure risk that can only produce negative effects, but in some cases, evaluating speculative risk with both negative and positive effects is important.

This chapter explains who needs to communicate about disaster risks and how. It also discusses what the critical information are especially in response to disasters and further how to educate people in preparation against disasters.

The word “crisis” means the turning point of whether one recovers from illness or the situation worsens; thus, we can map crises into four stages of illness, i.e., “prodromal crisis stage,” “acute crisis stage,” “chronic crisis stage,” and “crisis resolution stage.” From the societal safety sciences viewpoint, crisis management means a situation where an event that threatens safety and security of the society is close or proper responses at each stage after the event have taken place. For nations, administrations, and corporations, crisis management is the “processes of responding to serious situations of major accidents or mega disasters that have suddenly broken out after some symptoms and calming the seriousness to settle and situations to recover.”

In a law-abiding nation, the law plays a big role in maintaining social peace and people’s safety. This chapter overviews the document system of laws and guidelines and roles of administrative organizations and corporations.

This chapter gives an overview of disaster prevention and mitigation, i.e., disaster management, activities by the government. Such activities by the central government involve a number of tasks including maintenance and management of infrastructures, building disaster prevention plans, and research for promoting disaster management. The central government is also involved in accident investigation for securing safety and security for the people of Japan and arranging systems for public health. Local governments also carry out administration work for securing safety for the residents.

Disaster management is not just for the government. Various sections of the private sector carry out disaster management activities. At the time of disasters, volunteers and NPOs are well known. Corporations, on one hand, prevent accidents within and at the same time take measures to respond quickly in cases of emergency situations. The insurance system is another method of risk management that has been around since old times.

This chapter opens by discussing what effects disaster victims suffer from in their lifestyles and psychology. Then it will summarize what support systems are available in supporting victims that suffered large damages in terms of legal systems, public support, and psychological caretaking. The chapter closes with discussions on life and psychological effects of those that suddenly 1 day turned into crime victims and various supports for them.

This chapter reviews problems that surround high-level radioactive waste (HLW) and discusses what the governance of societal risk is. Governing all the risks scattered throughout the society takes multidimensional evaluations of trade-offs among multiple benefits and risks, and fair decision-making is essential for reaching agreements among members of the society on risk governance.

This summarizing chapter of this book gives a total view of the need for deepening societal safety sciences that the Faculty of Societal Safety Sciences of Kansai University first started. The chapter also looks at the future of societal safety sciences.

The reason why we need deepening of societal safety sciences is because events that concern safety and security of our constantly changing society do not always take places in the same manners. There are cases, of course, of the same damage repeating over; however, the reality keeps exposing us to new types of damages, one after another, that we never had faced before. When faced with them, we often end up only taking passive measures. Deepening societal safety sciences means to make moves ahead of the changing disasters and avoid or reduce the damages so it can contribute to building safe and secure societies.