• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.129-143
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• 2012

This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of advanced spatial modeling techniques for environmental monitoring and impact assessment through a case study of Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred in 1986. Land-cover types changed after the accident are analysed by a post classification comparison method using bi-temporal Landsat TM data acquired in 1986 and 1992 near the accident site. Spatial modeling including various kriging algorithms are also applied to analyze the relationships between Cesium concentrations in soil and thyroid cancer incidence rates in Belarus, which was greatly damaged by the accident. The change detection results clearly showed the decrease of croplands and the increase of abandoned lands, and concrete structures were newly built around the nuclear plant to prevent the spread of radioactive contamination. In Belarus, high Cesium concentrations were observed in southern areas with high thyroid cancer risk estimated by Poisson kriging. Geographically weighted regression, which could account for geographic variations of independent variables including Cesium concentrations and distances from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, was applied to extract the relationships between the independent variables and the thyroid cancer risk. The estimated risk values showed a correlation coefficient value of 0.98 with respect to the thyroid cancer risk values, which implied that the thyroid cancer risk in Belarus was affected by the accident. In conclusion, it is expected that advanced spatial modeling techniques applied in this study would be useful for environmental impact assessment and public health research.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.132-146
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• 2017

Appropriate speed limits at a reasonable level in urban roads are highly important factors for efficient and safe movement. Thus, it is greatly necessary to develop the objective models or methodology based on engineering study considering factors such as traffic accident rates, roadside development levels, and roadway geometry characteristics etc. The purpose of this study is to develop the estimate model of appropriate speed limits at each road sections in urban roads using traffic information big data and field specific data and to review the effects of accident decrease. In this study, the estimate method of appropriate speed limits in directional two or more lanes of urban roads is reflecting features of actual variables in a form of adjustment factor on the basis of the maximum statutory speed limits. As a result of investigating and testing influential variables, the main variables to affect the operating speed are the function of road, the existence of median, the width of lane, the number of traffic entrance/exit path and the number of traffic signal or nonsignal at intersection and crosswalk. As a result of testing this model, when the differences are bigger between the real operating speed and the recommended speed limits using model developed in this study, the accident rate generally turns out to be higher. In case of using the model proposed in this study, it means accident rate can be lower. When the result of this study is applied, the speed limits of directional two or more lane roads in Seoul appears about 11km/h lower than the current speed limits. The decrease of average operating speed caused by the decrease of speed limits is 2.8km/h, and the decrease effect of whole accidents according to the decrease of speed is 18% at research road. In case that accident severity is considered, the accident decrease effects are expected to 17~24% in fatalities, 11~17% in seriously injured road user, 6~9% in slightly injured road user, 5~6% in property damage only accidents.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.72-78
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• 2020

The accident fatality rate has decreased by more than 90% compared to 2006, due to the safety management and safety investment based on the Rail Safety Act. Most railway safety indicators, including fatality rates, have improved significantly from 60% to 80%, reaching the level of developed countries in terms of most railway safety indicators. However, the only staff fatality rate at work is not improved, and it is 3 to 5 times higher than that of developed countries. Most of the fatality occurred during employee's work recently occurred due to accidents hit by train while track work. In principle, when operating track need to check or maintenance, the operation of the train should be stopped and the work carried out. However, in Korea, due to the highest passenger density and train operating density in the world, it is caused by a structural problem that requires workers to enter the track while the train is running and perform various tasks such as maintenance and inspection. In this study, we analyzed the risk of accidents caused by hit by trains on the track, which is the biggest cause of staff fatality, using the main statistics of the last 10 years. In detail, the scenarios of the main causes of hit by trains and workers were formed to suggest the effectiveness of the current preventive measures and supplementary.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.141-150
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• 2017

A rapid increase in traffic accidents involving senior vehicle occupants has been an issue in Korea because of the aging of the population occurring at one of the fastest rates in the world; unfortunately, few studies beyond several looking at the effect of senior occupants on the level of accident injury severity can be found in the literature. A Multinomial logit model was estimated with Newton-Raphson algorithm to perform bias-reducing penalized likelihood optimization. Model covariates integral to developing the model were included, but the main focus was on the interaction of seating position and injury to senior vehicle occupants. It was found that the likelihood of an accident resulting in a fatality increased: 2.2 times for the driver seat, 2.7 times for the front passenger seat, and even 6.7 times for the rear seat. A mandatory seatbelt law to be extended to the rear seat needs to pass the assembly as soon as possible, and government, industry, and safety groups should be encouraged to join forces to strongly carry out targeted campaigns for the wearing of seatbelts in all vehicle seats to enhance the safety of senior occupants as well as other occupants who are vulnerable to road traffic accidents.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.207-214
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• 2001

The KN-12 spent nuclear fuel (SNF) transport cask is designed for transportation of up to 12 assemblies and is in standby status for being licensed in accordance with Korea Atomic Energy Act. To evaluate radiation shielding and criticality safety of the KN-12 cask, each case of study was carried out using MCNP4B Code. MCNP code is verified by performing benchmark calculation for the KSC-4 SNF cask designed in 1989. As a result of radiation safety evaluation for the KN-12 cask, calculated dose rates always satisfied the standards at the cask surface, at 2m from the surface in normal transport condition, and at 1 m from the surface in hypothetical accident condition. Maximum dose rate was always arisen on the side of the cask. For normal transport condition, photons primarily contribute to dose rate between two kinds of released sources, neutrons and photons, from spent nuclear fuel but for hypothetical accident condition, contrary case was resulted. The level of calculated dose rate was 27.8% of the limit at the cask surface, 89.3% at 2 m from the cask surface, and 25.1% at 1 m from the cask surface. For criticality analysis, keff resulting from the criticality analysis considering the condition of optimum partial flooding with fresh water is 0.89708(0.00065. The results confirm the standards recommended by all regulations on radiation safety.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.63-72
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• 1989

An analysis for the gamma radiation fields in the research reactor MAPLE-X10 facility has been peformed under the assumption of partial loss of reactor and service pool water to assess the safety from the view point of design. Four photon source terms considered in the analysis were calculated using the ORIGEN-S code. Gamma dose rate calculations over the reactor and service pools during the water-loss accident conditions were performed using QAD-CG code. MCNP code (Monte Carlo Neuron and Photon Transport code), also, was used to assess the scattered radiation fields away from the pools, which is appropriate for calculating the scattered photon dose rates outside of the solid angle subtended by the source and pool walls.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.78-86
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• 2019

Various safety measures have been established and implemented in order to reduce construction accidents. However, statistics data on at construction sites still show higher accident and mortality rates than other industries. As a result of investigating the causes of accidents occurring in the construction industry, most accidents resulted from the failure of the system. Therefore, the existing safety management system of the construction site is monitored so that it operates properly in the field, and it is an important factor to actively participate in construction work. In order to overcome this, the government emphasized on-site inspections and planning and implementation confirmation by public institutes to ensure the effectiveness of the safety management system through amendment of the Construction Technology Promotion Act, but the orderer' safety capability and manpower are insufficient at present. Therefore, in this study, the safety management system, such as design for safety, safety management plan, safety check, safety management cost, etc. specified in the Construction Technology Promotion Act, is regularly checked and confirmed to improve the effectiveness of the safety management system as well as to improve the safety management system of the construction site by deriving measures to strengthen the public function of the government.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.108-114
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• 2019

Unattended Train operation(UTO) requires higher safety target than other systems, since all train operations are automatic. The system provider to deliver without accident or failure, and the operator to transport passengers without accident by putting all trains supplied, including them, into service. Safety rates without such failures can be represented as indicators of RAMS, among which availability is continuously controllable to achieve the target, with a clear target. Availability is often required by the licensee from the initial stage of the project to demonstrate that the request for proposal (RFP) is usually specified and to maintain separate availability targets at the operational stage. In particular, unlike unmanned operation light rail in complex systems, simple formulas are often presented to facilitate verification at each stage. This paper presents this method of usability calculation in an integrated manner at all levels and analyzes the existing usability values to ensure reliability of the availability formula for integrated use in unmanned light rail systems.

• Journal of Auto-vehicle Safety Association
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.41-46
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• 2021

The number of big traffic accident cases of pedestrian death appeared to be minor, however compared to death rate in car to car accidents is very high and quite a few of the pedestrian death rates among all traffic accidents are counted to be almost 40%. Previous pedestrian safety studies were mostly aimed at reducing the degree of pedestrian injuries from a vehicle to pedestrian collision, and less at preventing a collision itself. This research was conducted with a method of using road facilities to prevent vehicles from rushing into the sidewalk. This research used one of the collision analyzing programs, called PC-Crash to simulate the vehicle rushing into the sidewalk. Based on the program, it could derive an optimal safe zone location where the pedestrian can wait for the pedestrian light safely. Also, changing road facilities such as pedestrian light pillars or signal controllers can widen 440% compared to the present safe zone. Accordingly, researchers have to consider a method to analyze and apply pedestrian safe zones along with road facilities location when designing a road.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4382-4394
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• 2023

Passive auto-catalytic recombiners (PARs) are widely used to mitigate a hydrogen hazard. The first step to evaluate the hydrogen safety by PARs is to obtain qualified test data of the PARs for validation of their analytical model. SPARC PAR tests SP8 and SP9 were conducted to evaluate the hydrogen recombination characteristics of a honeycomb-shaped catalyst PAR. To obtain the hydrogen recombination rate from the PAR test data, two methods, Method-1 and Method-2, introduced by the THAI project, were applied. Since a large gradient of hydrogen concentration developed during hydrogen injection can cause a large error in the hydrogen mass obtained by integrating the measured hydrogen concentrations, a gate was installed at the PAR inlet to homogenize hydrogen in the test vessel before the PAR operation in the tests. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code with a PAR model was also applied to evaluate the characteristics of the PAR recombination according to the PAR inlet conditions, and the results were compared with those from Method-1 and Method-2. It was confirmed that the recombination rates from Method-1 require a correction factor to be compatible with results from Method-2 and the CFD simulation in the case of the SPARC-PAR tests.