• KIEAE Journal
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.35-42
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• 2006

The apartment buildings now covers more than 50% of the total residential types in Korea and the urban residential area becomes increasingly congested with newly constructed high-rise apartment buildings. Judicial precedents require, for securing the solar rights in the residential area, that the consecutive sunshine duration should be at least two hours from 9:00 to 15:00 or the accumulative sunshine duration should be at least four hours from 8:00 to 16:00 as of the winter solstice. Disputes are increasing, however, on infringed solar rights and view rights for the neighboring structures as cases occur where the requirement cannot be satisfied in congested residential areas. The sunshine duration scan be assessed by measuring it on the site of the dispute, but it is impracticable to actually measure it for every case on the winter solstice, only one day out of the whole year. At a trial, therefore, 3D computer simulation is used to calculate the sunshine duration and determine the extent of infringement for submission of the evaluation to be used as the basis of the judgment. The simulation, however, may have an error in its result up to the program characteristics and the accuracy of the input data such as the structure shape and height, the distance between structures, and the ground level. This study, therefore, used a self-developed VIEW program with Autodesk VIZ 2006 to provide a simulation method for solar access evaluation, and verified its efficacy by comparing the results with the actual measurements.