• Agribusiness and Information Management
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.27-39
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• 2019

Agricultural risks are exacerbated by a variety of factors ranging from climatevariability and change, frequent natural disasters, uncertainties in yields and prices, weakrural infrastructure, imperfect markets and lack of financial services including limited spanand design of risk mitigation instruments such as credit and insurance. Indian agriculture has little more than half (53%) of its area still rainfed and this makes it highly sensitive to vagaries of climate causing unstable output. Besides adverse climatic factors, there are man-made disasters such as fire, sale of spurious seeds, adulteration of pesticides and fertilizers etc., and all these severely affect farmers through loss in production and farm income, and are beyond the control of farmers. Hence, crop insurance' is considered to be the promising tool to insulate the farmers from risks faced by them and to sustain them in the agri-business. This paper critically evaluates the performance of recent crop insurance scheme viz., Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bhima Yojana (PMFBY) and its comparative performance with earlier agricultural insurance schemes implemented in the country. It is heartening that, the comparative performance of PMFBY with earlier schemes revealed that, the Government has definitely taken a leap forward in covering more number of farmers and bringing more area under crop insurance with the execution of this new scheme and on this front, it deserves the appreciation in fulfilling the objective for bringing more number of farmers under insurance cover. The use of mobile based technology, reduced number of Crop Cutting Experiments (CCEs) and smart CCEs, digitization of land record and linking them to farmers' account for faster assessment/settlement of claims are some of the steps that contributed for effective implementation of this new crop insurance scheme. However, inadequate claim payments, errors in loss/yield assessment, delayed claim payment, no direct linkage between insurance companies and farmers are the major shortcomings of this scheme. This calls for revamping the crop insurance program in India from time to time in tune with the dynamic changes in climatic factors on one hand and to provide a safety-net for farmers to mitigate losses arising from climatic shocks on the other. The future research avenues include: insuring the revenue of the farmer (Price × Yield) as in USA and more and more tenant farmers should be brought under insurance by doling out discounts for group coverage of farmers like in Philippines where 20 per cent discount in premium is given for a group of 5-10 farmers, 30 per cent for a group of 10-20 and 40 per cent for a group of >20 farmers.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.238-238
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• 2015

There are demands for water environmental analysis of discharge processes in paddy fields, however, it is not fully understood in nutrients discharge process for watershed modeling. As hydrological processes both surface and ground water and agricultural water managements are so complex in paddy fields, the development of lowland paddy fields watershed model is more difficult than upland watershed model. In this research, the improvement of SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model for a paddy watershed was conducted. First, modification of surface inundated process was developed in improved pot hole option. Those modification was evaluated by monitoring data. Second, the monitoring data in river and drainage channel in lowland paddy fields from 2012 to 2014 were analyzed to understand discharge characteristics. As a case study, Imbanuma basin, Japan, was chosen as typical land and water use in Asian countries. In this basin, lowland paddy fields are irrigated from river water using small pumps that were located in distribution within the watershed. Daily hydrological fluctuation was too complex to estimate. Then, to understand surface and ground water discharge characteristics in irrigation (Apr-Aug) and non-irrigation (Sep-Mar) period, the water and material balance analysis was conducted. The analysis was composed two parts, watershed and river channel blocks. As results of model simulation, output was satisfactory in NSE, but uncertainty was large. It would be coming from discharge process in return water. The river water and ground water in paddy fields were exchanged each other in 5.7% and 10.8% to river discharge in irrigation and non-irrigation periods, respectively. Through this exchange, nutrient loads were exchanged between river and paddy fields components. It suggested that discharge from paddy fields was not only responded to rainfall but dynamically related with river water table. In general, hydrological models is assumed that a discharge process is one way from watershed to river. However, in lowland paddy fields, discharge process is dynamically changed. This function of paddy fields showed that flood was mitigated and temporally held as storage in ground water. Then, it showed that water quality was changed in mitigated function in the water exchange process in lowland paddy fields. In future, it was expected that hydrological models for lowland paddy fields would be developed with this mitigation function.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.149-153
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• 2008

The pollutant capacity occurred before and after the development of a watershed should be quantitatively estimated and controlled for the minimization of water contamination. The Ministry of Environment suggested a guideline for the legal management of nonpoint source from 2006. However, the rational method for the determination of treatment capacity from nonpoint source proposed in the guideline has the problem in the field application because it does not reflect the project based cases and overestimates the pollutant load to be reduced. So, we perform the standard rainfall analysis by analytical probabilistic method for the estimation of an additional pollutant load occurred by a project and suggest a methodology for the estimation of contaminant capacity instead of a simple rational method. The suggested methodology in this study could determine the reasonable capacity and efficiency of a treatment facility through the estimation of pollutant load from nonpoint source and from this we can manage the watershed appropriately. We applied a suggested methodology to the projects of housing land development and a dam construction in the watersheds. When we determine the treatment capacity by a rational method without consideration of the types of projects we should treat the 90% of pollutant capacity occurred by the development and to do so, about 30% of the total cost for the development should be invested for the treatment facility. This requires too big cost and is not realistic. If we use the suggested method the target pollutant capacity to be reduced will be 10 to 30% of the capacity occurred by the development and about 5 to 10% of the total cost can be used. The control of nonpoint source must be performed for the water resources management. However it is not possible to treat the 90% of pollutant load occurred by the development. The proper pollutant capacity from nonpoint source should be estimated and controlled based on various project types and in reality, this is very important for the watershed management. Therefore the results of this study might be more reasonable than the rational method proposed in the Ministry of Environment.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.33 no.5_3
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• pp.821-834
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• 2017

The increase in the rate of industrialization due to urbanization has caused the Urban Heat Island phenomenon where the temperature of the city is higher than the surrounding area, and its intensity is increasing with climate change. Among the cities where heat island phenomenon occurs, Seoul city has different degree of urbanization, green area ratio, energy consumption, and population density in each administrative district, and as a result, the strength of heat island is also different. So It is necessary to analyze the difference of Urban Heat Island Intensity by administrative district and the cause. In this study, the UHI intensity of the administrative gu and the administrative dong were extracted from the Seoul metropolitan area and the differences among the administrative districts were examined. and linear regression analysis were conducted with The variables included in the three categories(weather condition, anthropogenic heat generation, and land use characteristics) to investigate the cause of the difference in heat UHI intensity in each administrative district. As a result of analysis, UHI Intensity was found to be different according to the characteristics of administrative gu, administrative dong, and surrounding environment. The difference in administrative dong was larger than gu unit, and the UHI Intensity of gu and the UHI Intensity distribution of dongs belonging to the gu were also different. Linear regression analysis showed that there was a difference in heat island development intensity according to the average wind speed, development degree, Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI), Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI) value. Among them, the SAVI and NDBI showed a difference in value up to the dong unit and The creation of a wind route environment for the mitigation of the heat island phenomenon is necessary for the administrative dong unit level. Therefore, it is considered that projects for mitigating heat island phenomenon such as land cover improvement plan, wind route improvement plan, and green wall surface plan for development area need to consider administrative dongs belonging to the gu rather than just considering the difference of administrative gu units. The results of this study are expected to provide the directions for urban thermal environment design and policy development in the future by deriving the necessity of analysis unit and the factors to be considered for the administrative city unit to mitigate the urban heat island phenomenon.