• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.755-774
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• 2012

The main objective of the study is to propose GIS-based methods to assess the population distribution criteria for undesirable facilities such as nuclear power plants. First of all, a review of the relevant criteria was conducted for the official documents compiled by such institutions as IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), U.S. NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission), and some national institutes including the Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety. It is informed from the review that the fundamental principle underlying the various criteria is to maximize the distance between a plant and the nearest population center. It is realized that two interrelated GIS-based techniques need to be devised to put the principle into practice; sophisticated ways of representing population distribution and identifying population centers. A dasymetric areal interpolation is proposed for the former and cell-based and area-based critical density methods are introduced. Grid-based population distributions at various spatial resolutions are created by means of the dasymetric areal interpolation. By applying the critical density methods to the gridded population distribution, some population centers satisfying the population size and density criteria can be identified. These methods were applied to the case of the Gori-1 nuclear power plant and their strengths and limitations were discussed. It was revealed that the assessment results could vary depending upon which method was employed and what values were chosen for various parameters. This study is expected to contribute to foster the applications of methods and techniques developed in geospatial analysis and modeling to the site selection and evaluation.

• Spatial Information Research
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.35-46
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• 2014

Population data are usually provided at administrative spatial units in Korea, so areal interpolation is needed for fine-grained analysis. This study aims to compare various methods of areal interpolation for population subgroups rather than the total population. We estimated the number of elderly people and single-person households for small areal units from Dong data by the different interpolation methods using 2010 census data of Seoul, and compared the estimates to actual values. As a result, the performance of areal interpolation methods varied between the total population and subgroup populations as well as between different population subgroups. It turned out that the method using GWR (geographically weighted regression) and building type data outperformed other methods for the total population and households. However, the OLS regression method using building type data performed better for the elderly population, and the OLS regression method based on land use data was the most effective for single-person households. Based on these results, spatial distribution of the single elderly was represented at small areal units, and we believe that this approach can contribute to effective implementation of urban policies.