Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) recently released the NIES Annual Report 2013. The report outlines official activities conducted by the NIES in Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 (April 2012 to March 2013).
The report is comprised of four main research aspects of the NIES with the first one concerning eight key fields specified in the third NIES five-year plan. The eight fields are:
global environment;
material cycles and waste management;
environmental risk;
regional environment;
environmental biology and ecosystems;
environmental health;
social and environmental systems;
environmental measurement and analysis
The second aspect details a total of 10 research programs investigating the selected topics which were considered to need immediate actions or require more efficient allocation of research resources.
The third aspect focuses on maintenance of facilities involved in medium to long-term studies. The topics introduced in the report include the maintenance of global environmental monitoring equipment (e.g. satellites), the reference laboratory functions and the environmental inventories and databases etc.
The last aspect of the report outlines the progress of research on Disaster Environment. This is a new research area implemented after the Great East Japan Earth quake and has been prioritized in the third NIES five-year plan updated in March this year.
