Yoshinori Nakagawa

Policies for climate change adaptation differ from those for climate change mitigation, both of which share the common aim of maintaining a sustainable climate system that enables humankind to survive while enjoying wellbeing. Considering the variability in regional conditions, they must be diverse throughout the policymaking process, with the participation of multiple stakeholders, to place the livelihood of residents as the central issue. Simultaneously, these regional diversities must also be realized in a manner consistent with the global goal of climate change mitigation. To that end, comprehensive and transformative adaptation measures are essential, rather than responding to imminent issues on an ad-hoc basis. As the literature shows, a transdisciplinary approach involving researchers across different fields and multiple non-academic sectors can fill the gaps in transformative adaptation. Still, it has yet to be implemented because of the lack of experience of this issue. Here, we present key findings that affect the generation of synergies and tradeoffs among issues through our novel transdisciplinary approach in Kyoto, Japan, via a series of Future Design workshops in agriculture in collaboration with local farmers, regional policymakers, and researchers with diverse backgrounds. These results provide a direction for future research to secure a methodological foundation that will facilitate the sustainability of these efforts.

The relationship between aging brains and driving safety performances (DSPs) of elderly drivers was studied. A total of 90 dementia-free participants (63 men and 27 women, mean age 75.31 ± 4.795 years) were recruited and their DSPs were analyzed on actual vehicles running through a closed-circuit course. DSPs were comprehensively evaluated on the basis of driving instructors' scores (DIS). Signaling and visual research behaviors, part of DSPs, were measured to supplement the DIS evaluation by driving recorders (DR) and wearable wireless sensors (WS), respectively. Aging brains were evaluated via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings and experimentally assigned to two grades (high vs. low) of brain atrophy (BA) and leukoaraiosis (LA). Regression analyses on DIS and DR data, and logistic analysis on WS scores showed significant correlations of aging brains with degradation of DSPs. The participant group with more advanced BAs and LAs showed lower DIS, DR data, and WS scores representing degraded DSP regardless of age. These results suggest that MRI examinations from both volumetric and pathological perspectives of brains have the potential to help identify elderly drivers with dangerous driving behaviors. Brain healthcare, lifestyle improvements and medical treatments to suppress BA and LA, may contribute to preventing DSP degradation of elderly drivers with aging brains.