Under the supervision of the board of directors, IBS consists of the Secretariat, Strategic Development Research Group, Research Department, and Tohoku Office.
The Research Department and the Tohoku Office conduct principally research activities. The Strategic Policy Planning Group develops new research fields and conducts education and quality control.
The Secretariat provides better environment for research activities. It releases research results, gathers information, and exchanges information with the aim of supporting development of diversified and high-level research activities.
The Research Department organizes their researchers into five separate fields of specialization: transport, planning, economic and social systems, environment and resources, and language data.
The researchers in each research division are formed into interdisciplinary project teams. These teams look into problems from a comprehensive and multi-faceted standpoint, and are involved in basic research, formulation of methods for the solution of specific problems, and consulting activities.
The Systems Research Department supports the activities of the Research Department by means of computerized processing and analysis of vast quantities of information. In addition, this department is involved in the development of high-level systems and in research employing data processing technology.
The purpose of the Tohoku Office is to conduct surveys and research intimately connected with the Tohoku region. The office’s research activities aim at producing the most efficacious results through the accumulation of data bases.
IBS’s research system is characterized by an open and comprehensive framework involving cooperation between individual divisions, between separate areas of specialization, and between the worlds of academia, administration, industry, and public.