• Journal of Forest and Environmental Science
• /
• v.40 no.3
• /
• pp.210-226
• /
• 2024

Old-growth mixed-conifer forests in Bhutan are characterized by remarkable tree species compositional heterogeneity. However, our knowledge of tree species assemblages and their structural attributes in these forests has been limited. Therefore, forest classification has been reliant on a single dominant species. This study aimed to distinguish tree species assemblages in an old-growth mixed conifer forest in Western Bhutan and to describe their natural compositional and stand structural characteristics. Furthermore, the regeneration status of species was investigated and the quantity and quality of accumulated coarse woody debris were assessed. Ninety simple random sampling plots were surveyed in the study site between 3,000 and 3,600 meters above sea level. Tree, standing deadwood, regeneration, and coarse woody debris data were collected. Seven tree species assemblages were distinguished by Hierarchical Cluster Analysis and Indicator Species Analysis, representing five previously undescribed tree species associations with unique set of consistent species. Principal Component Analysis revealed two transitional pathways of species dominance along an altitudinal gradient, highly determined by relative topographic position. The level of stand stratification varied within a very wide range, corresponding to physiognomic composition. Rotated-sigmoid and negative exponential diameter distributions were formed by overstorey species with modal, and understorey species with negative exponential distribution. Overstorey dominant species showed extreme nurse log dependence during regeneration, which supports the formation of their modal distribution by an early natural selection process. This allows the coexistence of overstorey and understorey dominant species, increasing the sensitivity of these primary ecosystems to forest management.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.45 no.4
• /
• pp.139-147
• /
• 2024

This study enhances AI algorithms for extracting spinal regions from Whole Spine X-rays, aiming for higher accuracy while minimizing learning and detection times. Whole Spine X-rays, critical for diagnosing conditions such as scoliosis and kyphosis, necessitate precise differentiation of spinal contours. The conventional manual methodology encounters challenge due to the overlap of anatomical structures, prompting the integration of AI to overcome these limitations and enhance diagnostic precision. In this study, 1204 AP and 500 LAT Whole Spine X-ray images were meticulously labeled, spanning the third cervical to the fifth lumbar vertebrae. We based our efforts on the HR-Net algorithm, which exhibited the highest accuracy, and proceeded to simplify its network architecture and enhance the block structure for optimization. The optimized HR-Net algorithm demonstrates an improvement, increasing accuracy by 2.98% for the AP dataset and 1.59% for the LAT dataset compared to its original formulation. Additionally, the modification resulted in a substantial reduction in learning time by 70.06% for AP images and 68.43% for LAT images, along with a decrease in detection time by 47.18% for AP and 43.07% for LAT images. The time taken per image for detection was also reduced by 47.09% for AP and 43.07% for LAT images. We suggest that the application of the proposed HR-Net in this study can lead to more accurate and efficient extraction of spinal regions in Whole Spine X-ray images. This can become a crucial tool for medical professionals in the diagnosis and treatment of spinal-related conditions, and it will serve as a foundation for future research aimed at further improving the accuracy and speed of spinal region segmentation.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
• /
• v.9 no.5
• /
• pp.79-86
• /
• 2009

In a steel structure, spray-applied fire resistive materials are crucial in preventing structural strength from being weakened in the event of a fire. The quality control of such materials, however, is difficult for manual workers, who can frequently be in short supply. These skilled workers are also very likely to be exposed to environmental hazards. Problems with construction work such as this, which are specifically the difficulty of achieving quality control and the dangerous nature of the work itself, can be solved to some degree by the introduction of automated equipment. It is, however, very difficult to automate the work process, from operation to the selection of a location for the equipment, as the environment of a construction site has not yet been structured to accommodate automation. This is a fundamental study on the possibility of the automation of spray-applied fire resistive coating work. In this study, the linkability of the cutting-edge RTLS to an automation system is reviewed, and a scenario for the automation of spray-applied fire resistive coating work and system composition is presented. The system suggested in this study is still in a conceptual stage, and as such, there are many restrictions still to be resolved. Despite this fact, automation is expected to have good effectiveness in terms of preventing fire from spreading by maintaining a certain level of strength at a high temperature when a fire occurs, as it maintains the thickness of the fire-resistive coating at a specified level, and secures the integrity of the coating with the steel structure, thereby enhancing the fire-resistive performance. It also expected that if future research is conducted in this area in relation to a cutting-edge monitoring TRS, such as the ubiquitous sensor network (USN) and/or building information model (BIM), it will contribute to raising the level of construction automation in Korea, reducing costs through the systematic and efficient management of construction resources, shortening construction periods, and implementing more precise construction

• Journal of the Korean Academic Society of Industrial Cluster
• /
• v.1 no.1
• /
• pp.67-86
• /
• 2007

Wonju Medical Equipment Industry, despite of its short history, poor sales and weak manpower and so on, have shown remarkable outcomes in a relatively short period. At the end of 2007, totally 79 enterprises (only 4.6% of whole enterprises in Korea) made 10% of the nationwide production and 15% of the nationwide exports with an annual average growth rate of 66.7%, contributing domestic medical equipment industry tremendously. In addition, many leading medical equipment enterprises in various fields already moved or plan to move to Wonju, accelerating Wonju Medical Equipment Cluster. Wonju Medical Equipment Industry Cluster now enters into the growth stage, getting out of the initial business setup stage. Especially, the nomination of Wonju cluster project from the government accelerates networking (e.g. the development of the universal parts, the establishment of the mutual collaboration model among enterprises, and the mutual marketing), making a rapid growth in Wonju Medical Equipment Industry. Wonju Medical Equipment Industry Cluster revealed positive outcomes despite of the weakness in investment size and infra-structure comparing with the other medical industry cluster in the advanced country, while many domestic enterprises pursued their own growth models and thus failed to promote the international competitive power. Wonju Medical Equipment Industry has been developed rapidly. However, there are many challenging problems to support enterprises: small R&D investment and thus weak technology power, difficulties in recruiting R&D engineers, and poor marketing capabilities, financial infrastructure & policies, and network architecture. In order to develop a world-competitive medical equipment industry cluster at Wonju, the complement of infrastructures, the technology innovation, the mutual marketing, and the network expansion to support enterprises are further required. Wonju' s experiences in developing medical equipment industry so far suggest that our own flexible cluster model considering the industry structure and maturity for different regions should be developed, and specific action plans from the local and central governments based on their systematic strategies for industry development should be implemented in order to build world-competitive industry clusters in Korea.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
• /
• v.16 no.5
• /
• pp.29-38
• /
• 2015

The Energy Storage System stores electricity for later use. This system can store electricity from legacy electric power systems or renewable energy systems into a battery device when demand is low. When there is high electricity demand, it uses the electricity previously stored and enables efficient energy usage and stable operation of the electric power system. It increases the energy usage efficiency, stabilizes the power supply system, and increases the utilization of renewable energy. The recent increase in the global interest for efficient energy consumption has increased the need for an energy storage system that can satisfy both the consumers' demand for stable power supply and the suppliers' demand for power demand normalization. In general, an energy storage system consists of a Power Conditioning System, a Battery Management System, a battery cell and peripheral devices. The specifications of the subsystems that form the energy storage system are manufacturer dependent. Since the core component interfaces are not standardized, there are difficulties in forming and operating the energy storage system. In this paper, the design of the profile structure for energy storage system and realization of private profiling system for energy storage system is presented. The profiling system accommodates diverse component settings that are manufacturer dependent and information needed for effective operation. The settings and operation information of various PCSs, BMSs, battery cells, and other peripheral device are analyzed to define profile specification and structure. A profile adapter software that can be applied to energy storage system is designed and implemented. The profiles for energy storage system generated by the profile authoring tool consist of a settings profile and operation profile. Setting profile consists of configuration information for energy device what composes energy saving system. To be more specific, setting profile has three parts of category as information for electric control module, sub system, and interface for communication between electric devices. Operation profile includes information in relation to the method in which controls Energy Storage system. The profiles are based on standard XML specification to accommodate future extensions. The profile system has been verified by applying it to an energy storage system and testing charge and discharge operations.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.31 no.3
• /
• pp.593-612
• /
• 1996

This study concern with the changes of street from the Choseon Dynasty to present days around Old-Boundary in Taegu, analyzing the backgrounds of change factors and development trends of the Taegu City. The basis element of a city structure is the street. Therefore, in this study, a chage of street space of a city was investigted. Historically, Taegu was a walled city and had a Mono-nucleus which was restricted by the castle, and served as a starting point of formation of spatial structuure. The form of the artery street took a "T" pattern, othe streets were formed in irregular shapes. As the city grew gradually, the castle was removed on account of diversification in traffic network, change of socio-economic organization in traffic network, change of socio-economic organization, formation of industrial bases and functional distribution. CBD of this city has been located within the area surrounded by these streets. This is a kind of general pattern of traditional walled cities through the world in both Western and Oriental societies. A s the begining of this centry, a 'Dark Ages' descended upon Korea because the country was under the Japanese-Korean Annexation, and, throughout this period, the urban planning was planned exclusively for Japanese. The street pattern within residential areas of Korea took the maze type, in contrast with Japanese residential areas which showed grid pattern of streets. This is another general pattern of almost of all colonial cities especially in Asia. High class residential areas were planned and built by Japanese, and they were located within 5-10 minutes' on-foot distance from the CBD hard core. This high prestige has continued until the 1980s when it occurred land use succession which commerical functions invaded into residential areas. Back in the colonial period, there was a between two hetrogeneous groups due to the fact that the Japanese lived mainly oriented the new railway system but that Koreans still lived along the old highway system which ran through the Korea Peninsula. Street netwook formed in the above process has maintained its shape without great changes after the liberation form the Japanese Colony. Taegu has, accordingly, developed ring-radial network system which has been a combination of radial and ring facilities. The present conditions of street patterns in Taegy mainly depend on 4 rings and 8 radius, with grid pattern street able to be found in Old Boundary.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.49 no.4
• /
• pp.15-29
• /
• 2021

The study aims to grasp the perception and appraisal of urban park users through text analysis. This study used Google review data provided by Google Maps. Google Maps Review is an online review platform that provides information evaluating locations through social media and provides an understanding of locations from the perspective of general reviewers and regional guides who are registered as members of Google Maps. The study determined if the Google Maps Reviews were useful for extracting meaningful information about the user perceptions and appraisals for parks management plans. The study chose three urban parks in Seoul, South Korea; Seoul Forest, Boramae Park, and Olympic Park. Review data for each of these three parks were collected via web crawling using Python. Through text analysis, the keywords and network structure characteristics for each park were analyzed. The text was analyzed, as were park ratings, and the analysis compared the reviews of residents and foreign tourists. The common keywords found in the review comments for the three parks were "walking", "bicycle", "rest" and "picnic" for activities, "family", "child" and "dogs" for accompanying types, and "playground" and "walking trail" for park facilities. Looking at the characteristics of each park, Seoul Forest shows many outdoor activities based on nature, while the lack of parking spaces and congestion on weekends negatively impacted users. Boramae Park has the appearance of a city park, with various facilities providing numerous activities, but reviewers often cited the park's complexity and the negative aspects in terms of dog walking groups. At Olympic Park, large-scale complex facilities and cultural events were frequently mentioned, emphasizing its entertainment functions. Google Maps Review can function as useful data to identify parks' overall users' experiences and general feelings. Compared to data from other social media sites, Google Maps Review's data provides ratings and understanding factors, including user satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
• /
• v.39 no.5_3
• /
• pp.979-995
• /
• 2023

As wildfires are difficult to predict, real-time monitoring is crucial for a timely response. Geostationary satellite images are very useful for active fire detection because they can monitor a vast area with high temporal resolution (e.g., 2 min). Existing satellite-based active fire detection algorithms detect thermal outliers using threshold values based on the statistical analysis of brightness temperature. However, the difficulty in establishing suitable thresholds for such threshold-based methods hinders their ability to detect fires with low intensity and achieve generalized performance. In light of these challenges, machine learning has emerged as a potential-solution. Until now, relatively simple techniques such as random forest, Vanilla convolutional neural network (CNN), and U-net have been applied for active fire detection. Therefore, this study proposed an active fire detection algorithm using state-of-the-art (SOTA) deep learning techniques using data from the Advanced Himawari Imager and evaluated it over East Asia and Australia. The SOTA model was developed by applying EfficientNet and lion optimizer, and the results were compared with the model using the Vanilla CNN structure. EfficientNet outperformed CNN with F1-scores of 0.88 and 0.83 in East Asia and Australia, respectively. The performance was better after using weighted loss, equal sampling, and image augmentation techniques to fix data imbalance issues compared to before the techniques were used, resulting in F1-scores of 0.92 in East Asia and 0.84 in Australia. It is anticipated that timely responses facilitated by the SOTA deep learning-based approach for active fire detection will effectively mitigate the damage caused by wildfires.

• Korea journal of population studies
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.79-112
• /
• 2000

This study was focused on the contrasting pattern of part-time employment between Japan and Taiwan where the environments are similar in terms of expanding service industries and increasing flexibility of labor. In Japan, the expansion of part-time employment and its feminization have occurred, whereas they have not at all in Taiwan. The purpose of this study was to examine the reasons behind this phenomena, and to explore what relations they might have with the supply of women\`s labor in each country. Data analysis showed the following results. First, when the phenomena of part-time employment in Japan and Taiwan are summarized as \`active\` and \`inactive\` models, the difference could be explained by a structure-oriented approach rather than an individual-oriented approach. In other words, the difference between the two countries is mainly because of the structural characteristics of the labor market. a combination of capitalism and patriarchy, and an effect of state welfare and family policies rather than a \`voluntaristic choice\` due tn household work and child rearing. In light of this. the labor market segmentation and flexibility of labor theory in particular provided a useful frame for explanation. Second, with regard to the supply of women\`s labor, the difference between Japan and Taiwan could be found in the structure of the labor market and in family response strategies. The large corporation-oriented and strictly divided labor market structure in Japan activated part-time employment and its feminization, whereas, the small family-oriented businesses and less divided labor market in Taiwan supported the continuity of full-time employment of married women. There was also a room for informal employment in Taiwan which made part-time employment unnecessary. This study showed that even within similar environments of expanding service industry and pursuing flexibility of labor different measures and adaptations were possible. The case of Taiwan in particular, showed the significance of an informal labor market which was a part of industrialization process and a strategy of producing various products through a subcontracting network.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.160-197
• /
• 1996

The purpose of this study is to review research trends and issues of economic geography in Korea for the last fifty years by sub-fields of agricultural geography, industrial geography, commercial and service geography, and transportation geography. Research in Korean economic geography has progressed significantly in terms of the scope and the number of papers published during the last a half a century. Agricultural geography was a leading field of economic geography in Korea before mid-1970s. Since the mid-1970s, however, agricultural geography has turned over the leading role in economic geography to industrial geography. Classification and structure of agricultural region has been the most popular research theme in Korea, even though diverse topics has been dealt in the research of agricultulal geography in Korea during the last fifty years. In recent years, emphasis is given to study on the dynamics of agricultural region and regional differentiation of part-time farming. It is suggested that the future issues of research in agricultural geography in Korea are agricultural restructuring and changes in agricultural space under the WTO system, changes in rural area and agricultural region with the progress of informatization, changes in agricultural structures and rural society by the increase of part-time farming, governments agricultulal policy and its impacts, competitive advantages of Korean agricultulal products, and environmental impacts of agricultural restructuring. Research in industrial geography has remarkably progressed since the 1980s. Locational changes, regional industrial structure and formation of industrial region were the major topics of interest in the research of industrial geography in Korea before 1980. Since the early 1980s, in addition to the topics which were interested in before 1980, changes of industrial organization and industrial location, changes of production systems and industrial space development of high technology industries and science parks, industrial restructuring and regional economy, foreign direct investments, industrial linkages and industrial districts, and industrial policy and regional development have been the major research themes of industrial geography in Korea. Considerable number of papers has been published both in Korean journals and in foreign journals during this period. Considering global changes in the organization of industrial space, future research should be more focused on firms strategy for regaining competitive advantages, local and global perspectives of industry, industry and environmental changes, in addition to the topics which have been dealt in recent years. Research in commercial and service geography and transportation geography was negligible in Korea before the late 1970s. These two sub-fields in economic geography have begun to develop since 1980s. Periodic markets, structure of commercial area, and distribution of products were the major topics of interest in the 1980s in the commercial and service geography in Korea. In the 1990s, however reserch in producer services has been active with growth of producer services in Korean economy. It is suggested that regional changes with progress of informatization and technology, changes of international trade and regional changes, development of efficient distribution system, role of producer services in regional development, and network of producer services are the major issues to be studied in the future in the field of commercial and service geography in Korea. Commuting, distribution of products, and transportation networks have been the major topics of research in transportation geography in Korea. Diverse quantitative techniques have been applied in the most of the researches in transportation geography. It is required that future studies in transportation geography should also focus on societal and behavioral issues, policy issues regional impacts of new transportation facilities, an analysis of transportation system at the global or international level. Since the 1980s economic geography in Korea has considerably progressed with publication of papers and books. The progress can be regarded as successful in quantitative aspect, but not in quantitative aspects. For the development of Korean economic geography in both quantitative and qualitative aspects, it is necessary to promote international collaborative researches and interdisciplinary cooperations. Attention should also be given to the research on changes in competitive advantages and economic restructuring, changes of economic space with the development of high technology and the progress of informatization. economic development and culture. and foreign regional studies.