• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.86-94
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• 2020

Portable ladders are normally used both as an access tool for ascending and descending and as a platform for high place work. Though convenient, such usages make the portable ladders vulnerable to fall accidents. For this reason, many safety systems such as regulations and certifications are implemented to prevent fall accidents of portable ladders. However, nevertheless of those safety systems in Korea, annual death tolls of ladder fall accidents has remained high, and which suggests modification and improvement of the portable ladder related safety systems in Korea. The aim of this study is to propose directions for improving safety systems to effectively prevent fall accidents of portable ladders. To this end, comparative analysis on safety systems implemented in Korea and other countries including Japan, USA and UK are conducted to investigate the problems of Korean safety systems. Based on the analysis, limitations of Korean safety systems to prevent ladder fall accidents are discussed and tasks to overcome the limitations are proposed. Once implemented, the proposed tasks would contribute to prevent ladder fall accidents effectively.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.132-138
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• 2019

Fall accident is the most frequent accident type of occupational accidents. As the age of workers increases, trip and fall accident increases more than other types of occupational accident in the middle-aged group. In this study, the gait characteristics of 25 middle-aged participants (mean ages 47.4, S.D. 5.8) were studied to analyze the trip and fall risks. The Minimum toe clearance(MTC) against the floor surface was measured in the variable conditions of gait speed by a motion capture system. In the 50s age group, the MTC decreased and the MTC tended to reduce the variation with increasing walking speed in the level walking. Therefore, the trip and fall risks for the 50s age group is higher than the 40s age group. Especially, the faster walking speed will increase the trip and fall risks even more.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.1-8
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• 2018

Background: The purpose of this study is to provide basic data on physical therapy intervention by comparing the physical ability and fall efficacy and depression of elderly and hospitalized elderly. Method: This study was carried out with 22 hospitalized elderly who can live in Y-Hospital and 22 elderly people in Busan. We measured body mas index, time up & go test, function reach test, 10m walking test, bracket lifting test, fall efficacy and geriatric depression scale. The data collection period was from November to December 2017. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS Win 18.00 program. Results: There was a significant difference between the elderly and hospitalized elderly form physical ability and depression(p<.05). But Fall efficacy was no significant difference(p>.05). 10m walking with TUG, heel with fall efficacy showed quantitative correlation and 10m walking with fall efficacy, depression with fall efficacy, heel with TUG, 10m walking showed amulet correlation. There was a statistically significant difference. Conclusion: Elderly showed better results in physical ability and depression than hospitalized patients.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.96-101
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• 2022

The Occupational Safety and Health Act holds that industrial safety helmets can be used as protective equipment to prevent the risk of injury in fall accidents. To better understand the importance given to PPE for the head, we analyzed the relevant regulations and guidelines in developed countries and reviewed the guidelines on testing safety helmets. The PPE regulations in Korea were notably different from those in other countries. First, except in Korea and Japan, safety helmets were used for protection against falling objects, flying objects, impact, or electric shock. However, the regulations did not recognize safety helmets as a PPE against fall hazards. Second, the impact energy applied on the helmet was within the range 50-100 J, and the helmet could protect only the upper part of the head against hazards such as the impact of falling objects, flying objects, etc. Third, in Korean regulations, the term "fall" was used in relation to the parts where the safety helmet was specified as a fall hazard PPE, unlike in other countries. We propose that the term "fall" should be revised to "shock" in Korean regulations for the safety helmet.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.96-101
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• 2022

As the elderly population gradually increases, the risk of fatal fall accidents among the elderly is increasing. One way to cope with a fall accident is to determine the fall direction before impact using a wearable inertial measurement unit (IMU). In this context, a previous study proposed a method of classifying fall directions using a support vector machine with sensor velocity, acceleration, and tilt angle as input parameters. However, in this method, the IMU signals are processed through several processes, including a Kalman filter and the integration of acceleration, which involves a large amount of computation and error factors. Therefore, this paper proposes a machine learning-based method that classifies the fall direction before impact using IMU raw signals rather than processed data. In this study, we investigated the effects of the following two factors on the classification performance: (1) the usage of processed/raw signals and (2) the selection of machine learning techniques. First, as a result of comparing the processed/raw signals, the difference in sensitivities between the two methods was within 5%, indicating an equivalent level of classification performance. Second, as a result of comparing six machine learning techniques, K-nearest neighbor and naive Bayes exhibited excellent performance with a sensitivity of 86.0% and 84.1%, respectively.

• Journal of Korean Clinical Nursing Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.27-37
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• 2010

Purpose: This study was conducted to determine the effects of a fall prevention program on gait, balance and falls efficacy in stroke patients Methods: The study utilized a non-equivalent control group pretest and post test design. Subjects were contacted at the oriental medicine ward of D hospital in B city for strokes. The subjects were 25 in the experimental group and 25 in the control group. The fall prevention program consists of fall related exercises and fall related education. Collected data were analyzed using a t-test, Chi-Square test, Fisher's exact test by SPSS 14.0 Win program. Results: The fall prevention program with exercises and education used in this study was found to be very effective in increasing gait, balance and falls efficacy in patients with stroke. Conclusion: The fall prevention program used in this study seems appropriate for stroke patients. Thus, further research to refine the efficacy and application of this program is warranted.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.121-128
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• 2023

Construction industry is considered as one of the most high-risk industries for work-related injuries and fatalities, accounting for more than half of fatalities in Korea. Advanced countries have recognized the critical role of designers in preventing construction accidents and have established regulations on design for safety. In line with this, the Korean government have also implemented regulations that require owners and designers to review the safety of design outcomes. However, it has been observed that designers face challenges in identifying hazards and integrating design solutions at the design stage mainly due to their shortage of required knowledge and skills. This study aimed to examine design solutions that can be applied to prevent fall accidents in the construction industry, and to establish a relationship between these solutions and fatal fall accidents occurred over the past three years in Korea. This study also analyzed the relationships of four variables (construction type, cost, work type, and fall location) with design solutions. The results indicated that all four variables have significant relationships with design solutions, with fall location showing the strongest relationship. The design solutions and their relationships with fatal fall accidents identified in this study can be utilized in identifying hazard and integrating design solutions to ensure design for safety.

• The Journal of Korean society of community based occupational therapy
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.37-49
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• 2012

Objective : The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of mental practice on increasing balance and fall index & fall efficacy scale of persons with post stroke. Method : As a single subject research design with multiple baseline across individuals, the patients were four stroke patients, employed in this study. The employed program included receiving mental practice, and measuring balance score changes using FRT for 4 weeks, including baseline and intervention periods. The subject's fall danger were measured by Fall Index Test(Tetrax) and Fall Efficacy Scale for balance ability were analyzed. The analyses were performed using visually and Two Standard Deviation Band Method. Result : Using FRT, the participants improved their standing balance. During the intervention periods, Their improvement of balance skills results in decreasing Fall Index increasing Fall Efficacy. Conclusion : As a result of this study, mental practice can be an effective method to improve the balance of stroke patien.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.8
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• pp.232-237
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• 2013

A newly developed fall detection algorithm using the HMM (Hidden Markov Model) extracted from the video is introduced. To distinguish between the fall from personal difference fall pattern or the normal activities of daily living (ADL), HMM machine learning algorithm is used. For getting fall feature vector of video, the motion vector from the optical flow is applied to the PCA (Principal Component Analysis). The combination of the angle, ratio of long-short axis, velocity from results of PCA make the new fall feature parameters. These parameters were applied to the HMM and the results were compared and analyzed. Among the newly proposed various kinds of fall parameters, the angle of movement showed the best results. The results show that this parameter can distinguish various types of fall from ADLs with 91.5% sensitivity and 88.01% specificity.

• Journal of Korean Physical Therapy Science
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 2020

Background: This study analysed the effect of the fall prevention education activities on balance, fall efficacy, activities of daily living (ADL) of sub-acute stroke patients. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Methods: The subjects of the study were 24 subacute patients, who have onset period of less than 6 months. They are randomly allocated in the conventional therapy group (n=12) and fall prevention education group (n=12) and observed with frequency for 5 times a week for four weeks. Measuring took place before and after the experiment leading to following results of the Fall efficacy scale (FES), Berg balance scale (BBS) and Functional Independence Measure (FIM). Results: FES, BBS and FIM score was significantly greater in the post-test than in the pre-test in both groups (p<0.01). Independent t-test confirmed that the fall prevention education group showed much greater improvement change in the FES, BBS and FIM score than conventional therapy group (p<0.05). Conclusion: The present study demonstrated the importance of clinical contribution of the fall prevention education in the individuals with subacute stroke patients to the balance, fall efficacy and ADL following the stroke rehabilitation.