In 1997, visionary government leaders from the United States and Japan decided to establish the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at the University of Hawaii as a Japan-US partnership for the investigation of urgent climate questions in the region. IPRF has since become a "crossroads of the Pacific Ein climate science, contributing significantly to the education and professional development of many young climate scientists, especially from Japan. The IPRC is now an important and widely-known international center for climate science and also plays a unique role as a leader in establishing deep and long-lasting international research collaborations.

In fiscal year 2012, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport invited representatives from industry, government, and academia to sit on a Review Committee for comprehensive measures toward disseminate/promote LNG fuelled ships. The transition from heavy oil to natural gas as fuel for ships will have the same impact as did that from coal to heavy oil in the past. In this article I would like to describe, in simple terms: What is a natural gas fueled ship? What is the purpose in promoting their spread?

Since May of 2013 the Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB) has put online the Japan Marine Accident Risk and Safety Information System, providing a visualization of where marine accidents and incidents occurred in the past. The system is able to display accident information and also various kinds of safety information, allowing identification of high-risk ocean areas as well as access to analyses of accidents and incident and recurrence prevention measures based on JTSB's accident investigation reports. It is our hope that this will serve as a useful tool for those involved in the shipping industry to prevent future accidents.