• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.449-457
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• 2015

Objectives: In Korea, the system of management of medical waste largely relies on the incineration method. Our study aimed to identify any regional imbalances between the generation and treatment of medical waste, and provide reference data for future policy in Korea. Methods: We analyzed data on the amount of medical waste from 2,000 hospitals in 2012, 2013, and 2014 obtained from the Korea Environment Corporation. In the Arc GIS program (version 10.2.3), the addresses of hospitals and incinerators were transformed into map coordinates. The amount of waste generated by each hospital and the amount incinerated were represented by density and size of a triangle symbol, respectively. Results: As of 2014, the total amount of medical waste from the top 2,000 hospitals was 136,073 tons, out of which about half (49%) was generated in the capital area. Eleven incineration companies (three in the capital area, two in the Chungcheong Provinces area, one in the Jeolla Provinces area, and five in the Gyeongsang Provinces area) treated this waste. For the years 2012, 2013, and 2014, about 60% of the medical waste generated from the hospitals in the capital area was treated within the capital area and about 40% was transported to other areas, especially the Gyeongsang Provinces area, for treatment. On the other hand, about 90% of the medical waste incinerated in the capital area originated from the capital area. Conclusion: Our results suggest a spatial imbalance between the generation and treatment of medical waste in Korea and warrants multilateral policies, including the expansion of on-site treatment, strengthening regulation of the containment of medical wastes, promoting reductions in medical waste and more.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.29-41
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• 2014

The Korean government has purchased land properties alongside any significant water bodies before setting up the buffers to secure water qualities. Since the annual budgets are limited, however, there has always been the issue of which land parcels ought to be given the priority. Therefore, this study aims to develop efficient mechanism for land acquisition priorities in stream corridors that would ultimately be vegetated for riparian buffer zones. The criteria of land acquisition priority were driven through literary review along with experts' advice. The relative weights of their value and priorities for each criterion were computed using the Analytical Hierarchy Process(AHP) method. Major findings of the study are as follows: 1. The decision-making structural model for land acquisition priority focuses mainly on the reduction of non-point source pollutants(NSPs). This fact is highly associated with natural and physical conditions and land use types of surrounding areas. The criteria were classified into two categories-NSPs runoff areas and potential NSPs runoff areas. 2. Land acquisition priority weights derived for NSPs runoff areas and potential NSPs runoff areas were 0.862 and 0.138, respectively. This implicates that much higher priority should be given to the land parcels with NSPs runoff areas. 3. Weights and priorities of sub-criteria suggested from this study include: proximity to the streams(0.460), land cover(0.189), soil permeability(0.117), topographical slope(0.096), proximity to the roads(0.058), land-use types(0.036), visibility to the streams(0.032), and the land price(0.012). This order of importance suggests, as one can expect, that it is better to purchase land parcels that are adjacent to the streams. 4. A standard scoring system including the criteria and weights for land acquisition priority was developed which would likely to allow expedited decision making and easy quantification for priority evaluation due to the utilization of measurable spatial data. Further studies focusing on both point and non-point pollutants and GIS-based spatial analysis and mapping of land acquisition priority are needed.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.371-384
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• 2002

It is very important to predict the environmental changes in the land-surface as a way of prevention of sustainable nature. This study investigated the difference between the predicted and actual data of Anmyeon-do from 1981 to 2000 through a fuzzy logic operation using multi-spectral image. According to literature survey, maps, and ground truth data, the types of land-use have changed due primarily to shore reclamation or wild land and grassland fostering before the eighties. After the mid-eighties, however, a number of private residents and commercial stores quickly have spreaded throughout beach resorts and quasi-agricultural and forest areas. Moreover, shore and community regions were severely damaged in the nineties with increased farmland, due to the development of tour places and expansion of city area. The predicted result of the environmental changes in the land-surface using the fuzzy logic operation was almost similar to the state of Anmyeon-do obtained through the satellite image. Particularly, the flat lands near the shore was predicted to change slightly. This area is largely under development, thereby raising concerns on the shore environment. Thus, this method is applicable to conducting research on the change in the land-surface.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.97-112
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• 2001

The Section 12 of Groundwater Law stipulates that groundwater conservation zone should be regulated by the designation of conservation area and development restricted area, The most important policy for groundwater conservation and protection is to estimate and designate groundwater conservation zone. The groundwater classification map is utilized to determine the prime groundwater conservation areas, which delineate the first and the second ranked conservation areas of the map. According to the classification method of the Ministry of Construction and Transportation in 2000, groundwater quality for groundwater classification is classified with 4 levels based on the following conditions : (1) the present groundwater quality; (2) the potential usage as drinking water at present and in the future; (3) hydrogeological characteristics, and (4) the existence of pollution sources and activities. Throughout the initial analysis, the groundwater conservation areas are represented about 57.1$\textrm{km}^2$ in the groundwater classification map, which is 9.4% of Seoul Metropolitan Area. The management guidelines for groundwater conservation area are also developed referring to Cheju Province Groundwater Conservation Management Project and the guidelines by the Ministry of Construction and Transportation. But the specific administration and detailed technical survey should be prepared to efficiently manage the groundwater conservation area.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.36-45
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• 2018

Cemeteries in the United States are frequently observed near residential areas in cities even though they are spaces for the dead. However, it has not been fully studied when and how cemeteries were formed in the process of urbanization. Thus, this research aimed to investigate the spatial structure and historical change of cemeteries in Seattle due to urbanization, focusing on the contextual relationship between cemeteries and the surroundings according to two time periods: the early formation period of cemeteries in Seattle and the current period. For this, a mixed method was taken in this paper that combined historical analysis based on old references and historic maps with cluster analysis using GIS. In conclusion, the research found that early cemeteries of Seattle in downtown areas were introduced as by-products of urban formation, but the cemeteries in the suburbs were established ahead of urban growth and neighborhood development. In addition, Seattle's cemeteries not only showed a similar locational pattern to Seattle's shopping centers, but also were positively associated with population distribution given the Hot Spot Analysis. In other words, Seattle's cemeteries were originally located in rural areas, but later came to be located in urban areas, sustaining the landscape of American rural cemeteries.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.8D no.4
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• pp.377-386
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• 2001

In spatial database system, spatial view is supported for efficient access method to spatial database and is managed by materialization and non-materialization technique. In non-materialization technique, repeated execution on the same query makes problems such as the bottle-neck effect of server-side and overloads on a network. In materialization technique, view maintenance technique is very difficult and maintenance cost is too high when the base table has been changed. In this paper, the SVMT (Spatial View Materialization Technique) is proposed by using R-tree re-construction. The SVMT is a technique which constructs a spatial index according to the distribution ratio of objects in spatial view. This ratio is computed by using a SVHR (Spatial View Height in R-tree) and SVOC (Spatial View Object Count). If the ratio is higher than the average, a spatial view is materialized and the R-tree index is re-used. In this case, the root node of this index is exchanged a node which has a MBR (Minimum Boundary Rectangle) value that can contains the whole region of spatial view at a minimum size. Otherwise, a spatial view is materialized and the R-tree is re-constructed. In this technique, the information of spatial view is managed by using a SVIT (Spatial View Information Table) and is stored on the record of this table. The proposed technique increases the speed of response time through fast query processing on a materialized view and eliminates additional costs occurred from repeatable query modification on the same query. With these advantages, it can greatly minimize the network overloads and the bottle-neck effect on the server.

• Journal of KIISE:Databases
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.271-281
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• 2006

Recently the need for Location-Based Service (LBS) has increased due to the development and widespread use of the mobile devices (e.g., PDAs, cellular phones, labtop computers, GPS, and RFID etc). The core technology of LBS is a moving-objects database that stores and manages the positions of moving objects. To search for information quickly, the database needs to contain an index that supports both real-time position tracking and management of large numbers of updates. As a result, the index requires a structure operating in the main memory for real-time processing and requires a technique to migrate part of the index from the main memory to disk storage (or from disk storage to the main memory) to manage large volumes of data. To satisfy these requirements, this paper suggests a unified index scheme unifying the main memory and the disk as well as migration policies for migrating part of the index from the memory to the disk during a restriction in memory space. Migration policy determines a group of nodes, called the migration subtree, and migrates the group as a unit to reduce disk I/O. This method takes advantage of bulk operations and dynamic clustering. The unified index is created by applying various migration policies. This paper measures and compares the performance of the migration policies using experimental evaluation.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.145-157
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• 2012

In this study, we simulated a carbon flux model, so called Vegetation Integrated Simulator for Trace gases (VISIT) using Spatio-temporal Environmental Information, to estimate carbon budgets of vegetation ecosystem in South Korea. As results of the simulation, the model estimated that the annual-average gross primary production (GPP), net primary production (NPP) for 10 years were $91.89Tg\;C\;year^{-1}$, and $40.16Tg\;C\;year^{-1}$, respectively. The model also estimated the vegetation ecosystems in South Korea as a net carbon sink, with a value of $3.51Tg\;C\;year^{-1}$ during the simulation period. Comparing with the anthropogenic emission of South Korea, vegetation ecosystems offsets 3.3% of human emissions as a net carbon sink in 2007. To estimate the carbon budget more accurately, it is important to prepare reliable input datasets. And also, model parameters should be calibrated through comparing with various independent method. The result of this study, however, would be helpful for devising ecosystem management strategies that may help to mitigate global climate change.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.45 no.6
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• pp.697-707
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• 2012

The quantitative landslide susceptibility assessment methods can be divided into statistical approaches and geomechanical approaches based on the consideration of the triggering factors and landslide models. The geomechanical approach is considered as one of the most effective approaches since this approach proposes physical slope model and considers geomorphological and geomechanical properties of slope materials. Therefore, the geomechanical approaches has been used widely in landslide susceptibility analysis using the infinite slope model as physical slope model. However, the previous studies assumed constant groundwater level for broad study area without the consideration of rainfall intensity and hydraulic properties of soil materials. Therefore, in this study, landslide susceptibility assessment was implemented using the coupled infinite slope model with hydrologic model. For the analysis, geomechanical and hydrualic properties of slope materials and rainfall intensity were measured from the soil samples which were obtained from field investigation. For the practical application, the proposed approach was applied to Jinbu area, Gangwon-Do which was experienced large amount of landslides in July 2006. In order to compare to the proposed approach, the previous approach was used to analyze the landslide susceptibility using randomly selected groundwater level. Comparison of the results shows that the accuracy of the proposed method was improved with the consideration of the hydrologic model.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.250-259
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• 2006

This study looks into forest fire occurrence hazards according to the change of temperature and humidity over thirty years at interval of ten days. We used data from the forest fire inventory from 1995 to 2004 and weather data such as average temperature and relative humidity for 30 years from 1971 to 2000. These data were expressed as a database with ten-day intervals for 76 weather stations. Forest fire hazards occurred in the spring season from the end of March to the middle of April. For the first step, the primitive surface of temperature and humidity was interpolated by IDW (the standard interpolation method). These thematic maps have a 1 km by 1 km grid spacing resolution. Next, we executed a simple regression analysis after extracting forest fire frequency, temperature and humidity values from 76 weather stations. The results produced a coefficient of determination ($R^2$) ranging from 0.4 to 0.6. Moreover, the estimation of forest fire occurrence hazards during early April was very high at Gyeongbuk Interior, Chungcheong Interior and part of Gangwon. The range of temperature and humidity having an influence on forest fire occurrence was as follows: average temperature and relative humidity in early April was $9-12^{\circ}C$ and 61-65%. At the end of March, temperature was $6-10^{\circ}C$, humidity 62-67%, and temperature was $11-14^{\circ}C$ and humidity 60-67% in the middle of April.