Source: RISK newsletter,
First Quarter 1996, published by the Society for Risk Analysis
Saburo Ikeda, professor at the University of Tsukuba’s Institute of Socio-Economic Planning and the fourth president of the Society for Risk Analysis’ Japan Section, received the Society’s Outstanding Service Award for 1995 at the SRA Annual Meeting in Hawaii. The award recognized his role in the initial activities which led to organizing the Japan Section. He has also held several elected positions in the section, served as its secretariat, and actively participated in the parent SRA.
Ikeda’s introduction to SRA came in October 1984, when he and Kazuhiko Kawamura of Vanderbilt University organized a joint workshop in Tsukuba on “Risk Management in the U.S. and Japan—A Comparative Perspective” cosponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences.
“The workshop was conducted as a working forum with a rather limited number of discussants from both countries,” Ikeda explained, “since we (Japan) had not established a research area of risk analysis such as that in the United States.” He recalled that most of the U.S. participants were active SRA charter members, including Elizabeth Anderson, Vincent Covello, Lester Lave, Roger Kasperson, Paul Slovic, Curtis Travis, and others. “We Japanese participants were very much impressed by the disciplinary scope, methodologies, and practices of risk analysis that were conducted in the U.S.,” said Ikeda, and that was the primary reason he joined SRA in 1985.
Following the first workshop, Osaka University professors Tomitarou Sueishi, who would become the first Japan Section president, and Tohru Morioka, one of the first councilors, organized a second workshop, where the Japanese participants came to a consensus that Japan should have a society similar to SRA to promote international cooperation and, in particular, to learn the advanced level of both academic and practical studies in the field of risk analysis. The Section’s inaugural meeting and first elections were held June 25, 1988. Ikeda was elected secretary and councilor (section officials serve two-year terms) and was reelected secretary in 1990. He was elected vice-president in 1992, which included a successive term as president from 1994 to the present.
Ikeda’s contributions to SRA include serving a three-year term as councilor, beginning in 1990; participating in most of the international SRA annual meetings since 1985; and submitting papers which have been published in Risk Analysis. Since 1988, he has been the point man for communications between SRA and Japan and with RISK newsletter. In addition, it was he who originally proposed that an annual meeting of the Society be held in Hawaii with the Japan Section as cosponsor. He later served on the Section’s committee to organize the meeting.
Ikeda has a B.S., an M.S., and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics
and physics from Kyoto University. Before joining SRA, he was
involved in several policy studies of pollution
control—particularly air and water pollution problems
associated with regional development programs—which were
similar to risk analysis. As a research scholar at the
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in 1976-77,
he did a comparative study of environmental problems in the U.S.
Tennessee Valley Authority program, the former U.S.S.R. Bratsk
Illimsk program, and Japan’s bullet train program. In
1980-81, he studied air pollution control policy as a research
fellow in the Centre for Environmental Technology at London
University’s Imperial College. In 1986-87, he worked on the
risk issues of advanced technology and biotechnology as a
Fulbright research scholar at Clark University’s Center for
Technology, Environment, and Development. He joined the
University of Tsukuba faculty in 1982 and chaired the graduate
program in socio-economic planning in 1993-95.