• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.32-38
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• 2011

As the using rate of an explosive gas has been increased in the industrial site, the regional residents adjacent to the site as well as the site workers have frequently fallen into a dangerous situation. Damage caused by accident in the process using hydrogen gas is not confined only to the relevant process, but also is linked to a large scale of fire or explosion and it bring about heavy casualties. Therefore, personnel in charge should investigate the kinds and causes of the accident, forecast the scale of damage and also, shall establish and manage safety countermeasures. We, in Anti-Calamity Research Center, forecasted the scope of danger if break out a fire or/and explosion in hydrogen gas facilities of MLCC firing process. We selected piping leak accident, which is the most frequent accident case based on an actual analysis of accident data occurred. We select and apply piping leak accident which is the most frequent case based on an actual accident data as a model of damage forecasting scenario caused by accident. A jet fire breaks out if hydrogen gas leaks through pipe size of 10 mm ${\Phi}$ under pressure of 120 bar, and in case of $4kw/m^2$ of radiation level, the radiation heat can produce an effect on up to distance of maximum 12.45 meter. Herein, we are going to recommend safety security and countermeasures for improvement through forecasting of accident damages.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2016

Urbanization in Korea has increased significantly and subsequently, various facilities have been concentrated in urban areas at high speed in accordance with a growing urban population. Accordingly, damages have occurred due to a variety of disasters. In particular, fire damage among the social disasters caused the most severe damage in urban areas along with traffic accidents. 44,432 cases of fire occurred in 2015 in Korea. Due to these accidents, 253 were killed and property damage of 4,50 billion won was generated. However, despite the efforts to reduce a variety of damage, fire danger still remains high. In this regard, this study collected fire data, generated from 2007 to 2014 through the Jinju Fire Department and the National Fire Data System(NFDS) and calculated fire risk by analyzing the clustering of fire cases and facilities in Jinju-si based on the current DB of facilities, offered by the Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs. As a result, the risk ratings of fire occurrence were classified as four stages under the standards of the US Society of Fire Protection Engineers(SEPE). Business facilities, entertainment facilities, and automobile facilities were classified as the highest A grade, detached houses, Apartment houses, education facilities, sales facilities, accommodation, set of facilities, medical facilities, industrial facilities, and life service facilities were classified as U grade, and other facilities were classified as EU grade. Finally, hazardous production facilities were classified as BEU grade, the lowest grade. In addition, in the case of setting the standard with loss of life, the highest risk facility was the hazardous production facilities, while in the case of setting the standard with property damage, a set of facilities and industrial facilities showed the highest risk. In this regard, this study is expected to be effectively utilized to establish the fire reduction measures against facilities, distributed in urban space by calculating risk grades regarding the generation frequency, casualties, and property damage, through the classification of fire, occurred in the city, according to the facilities.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.192-205
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• 2009

The unexpected wind over the Mt. Hwawang on 9 February 2009 was deadly when many spectators were watching a traditional event to burn dried grasses and the fire went out of control due to the wind. We analyzed the fatal wind based on wind flow simulations over a digitized complex terrain of the mountain with a localized heating area using a three dimensional computational fluid dynamics model, CFD_NIMR_SNU (Computational Fluid Dynamics_National Institute of Meteorological Research_Seoul National University). Three levels of fire intensity were simulated: no fire, $300^{\circ}C$ and $600^{\circ}C$ of surface temperature at the site on fire. The surface heat accelerated vertical wind speed by as much as $0.7\;m\;s^{-1}$ (for $300^{\circ}C$) and $1.1\;m\;s^{-1}$ (for $600^{\circ}C$) at the center of the fire. Turbulent kinetic energy was increased by the heat itself and by the increased mechanical force, which in turn was generated by the thermal convection. The heating together with the complex terrain and strong boundary wind induced the unexpected high wind conditions with turbulence at the mountain. The CFD_NIMR_SNU model provided valuable analysis data to understand the consequences of the fatal mountain fire. It is suggested that the place of fire was calm at the time of the fire setting due to the elevated terrain of the windward side. The suppression of wind was easily reversed when there was fire, which caused updraft of hot air by the fire and the strong boundary wind. The strong boundary wind in conjunction with the fire event caused the strong turbulence, resulting in many fire casualties. The model can be utilized in turbulence forecasting over a small area due to surface fire in conjunction with a mesoscale weather model to help fire prevention at the field.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.634-643
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• 2023

Purpose: Underground common duct fires are steadily occurring, and the proportion of property damage is particularly large among property and human casualties caused by fires. Especially, cable fires that occur in common areas can spread vertically quickly and pose a great risk. This paper aims to scientifically analyze the nature of the fire by reproducing the fire through experiments. Method: To analyze the characteristics of cable fires in underground common duct, heat release rate and temperature changes were measured through Room-corner (ISO 9705) test, and the vertical and horizontal propagation of cable fires was quantitatively compared and analyzed. Result: The Room Corner Test (ISO 9705) was used to compare the temperature changes at each data logger point. The results showed that the time it took for the fire to reach the ignition temperature in the horizontal and vertical directions from the center point of the first-tier cable was 589 seconds and 536 seconds, respectively, which means that the vertical fire propagation is 53 seconds faster than the horizontal propagation. This proves that the vertical propagation of fire is relatively faster than the horizontal propagation. The horizontal propagation speed of the fire was also compared for each floor cable tray. The results showed that the third-tier cable propagated at 3.4 times the speed of the second-tier cable, and the second-tier cable propagated at 1.5 times the speed of the first-tier cable. This means that the higher the cable is located, the faster the fire spreads and the larger the fire becomes. Conclusion: This study identified the risks of cable fires and analyzed the risks of vertical fire propagation during cable fires based on the results of the Room Corner Test. Studies to prevent the spread of fire and fire response policies to prevent vertical fire propagation are required. The results of this study are expected to be used to assess the fire risk of common areas and other fires.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.57-66
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• 2018

The most urgent requirement in the event of disaster and fire in a skyscraper is to establish a system that enables people inside to evacuate safely. Hence, a practical direction needs to give evacuees confidence in the evacuation by reducing the psychological anxiety caused by the relatively large number of people inside and at the same time, the physically prolonged evacuation travel line. Evacuation tests with large numbers of people were conducted three times to solve these challenges and identify phenomena and issues that occurred during the experiment. The results revealed the factors that could cause a delay in evacuation and suggested improvements. The study results of this paper are as follows. First, a recent fire at a multipurpose high-rise resulted in a number of casualties due to a lack of experience with the disaster prevention system. To prevent such cases from occurring in advance, adaptability was achieved by conducting evacuation tests. Second, the data collected in the evacuation simulation statistics and the actual escape drills were compared and analyzed. Third, in the evacuation experiment, a large number of people could not participate in the experiment. The reasons for not participating were analyzed and their impact on the actual evacuation time was confirmed. Fourth, equipment aids were purchased to establish the optimal response measure to the causes of a delay in escape time and the standards for ensuring the safety of the evacuee were specified by developing improvements to minimize the evacuation delay time through comparative before and after analysis of the experiment. These results can be used for fire safety control of skyscrapers to improve the efficiency of evacuation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Disaster and Security
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.15-21
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• 2016

According to the disaster statistics issued by the Ministry of Public Safety and Security, traffic accidents, fire, collapses and others are classified into twenty-three (23) categories. In the past, disasters were mainly caused by the influence of nature, such as typhoon or drought. On the other hand, as society has become city-centered, social disasters' types, frequencies and scales are becoming more diversified and ever-increasing. However, there are no specific criteria and assessment methods that can measure degrees of social disasters-related risks objectively. Therefore, this study targeted traffic accidents, fire and collapses from major social disasters, utilized data that are related to occurrence rate, scale of casualties and scale of property loss in past eight years, and calculated the disaster risk index using the distance (Euclidean distance) between two points on the 3D spatial coordinates, in order to make the objective assessment by social disaster type possible. These results will enable the objective evaluation of risk index of major social disaster to be used as the foundational data when building the national disaster management system.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.81-88
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• 2017

This study analyzed chemical accidents each year according to the status, type of accident, accident place, business size, and chemical substance. The results of the chemical accident investigation were 16 cases in 2013, 27 cases in 2014, 46 cases in 2015, and 23 cases in 2016. According to the type of chemical accident, number of accidents, and casualty accidents, leakage was found to be the major cause. As a result of accidents and casualties caused by chemical accidents, workplaces had the highest numbers in all survey items. An examination of the top 10 accident materials revealed 9 substances to be hazardous chemicals. These materials were accident preparedness substances, and toxic substances.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.67-74
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• 2014

Buried natural gas pipelines in densely populated urban areas have serious hazards of property damages and casualties generated by release, dispersion, fire and explosion of gas caused by outside or inside failures. So as to prevent any accident in advance, managers implement danger management based on quantitative risk analysis. In order to evaluate quantitative risk about buried natural gas pipelines, we need calculation for radiant heat and pressure wave caused by calculation for release rate of chemical material, dispersion analysis, fire or explosion modeling through consequence analysis in priority, in this paper, we carry out calculation for release rate of pressured natural gas, radiant heat of fireball based in accident scenario of actual "San Bruno" buried high pressured pipelines through models which CCPS, TNO provide and compare with an actual damage result.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.100-107
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• 2011

In this study, a simulated situation in which the visions of the evacuees were blocked by the smoke, which is one of the most dangerous factors that cause casualties in case of an emergency, was conducted for the evaluation of the performance of an evacuation guidance system. For this purpose, the behavior and time taken by the experiment subjects in simulated evacuation test were measured and analyzed. When the evacuation guidance sound signals were given by 4 speakers at the same time, most of the subject were disoriented and took generally longer in getting to the pre-designated evac point. And, using only one speaker instead of two showed a better result in terms of the evacuation behavior or and orientation. Also, when there were two or more speakers used for the broadcasting of the guidance message, it turned out that using Hass effect, and placing the speakers closer, could result in higher awareness of the guidance message and maintenance of the orientation, while it also made the subjects took short to get to the evac point.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.97-104
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• 2019

Behind the growth of the chemical industry which is a cornerstone of the Korean economy, dozens of hazardous and noxious chemical accidents occur every year, resulting in enormous casualties and environmental damages. Many cases among chemical accidents are caused by the carelessness of workers in handling facilities such as hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid, and the aging of handling facilities. In order to mitigate the damage by such chemical accidents, a safety system for preventing atmospheric diffusion of hazardous and xoxious chemicals in dike was proposed. The atmospheric diffusion prevention safety system consists of leak detection phase, alarm and measurement phase, suppression and blocking phase. Through the proposed the atmospheric diffusion prevention safety system, the need for 2nd chemical accident prevention such as atmospheric diffusion in dike can be posed.