• Atmosphere
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.337-355
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• 2018

Ultrafine particles (< 100 nm in diameter, UFP) are known to be more toxic per unit mass than larger particles and contribute to more than 90% in particle number concentrations in urbanized cities but much less in mass. The major sources of UFP are vehicle emissions in urban areas. Due to their tiny size (the sizes of UFP from vehicle emissions range from 10 to 60 nm depending on engine and fuel types), inhaled UFP can reach the deepest area of respiratory track (e.g., pulmonary alveoli) as well as all of the body via lymph and blood circulation causing various adverse health effects. This article reviews the sources and emission factors of UFP, temporal and spatial distributions in urban areas and their health effects reported by toxicological and epidemiological studies. We also compared the levels of UFP concentrations measured in other countries with those in Korean cities to evaluate the public exposure to UFP in Korea. Ultimately, we expect this study can contribute to developing the risk assessment techniques for public exposure to UFP in the urbanized cities in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.57-65
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• 2010

Physical activity of the people has decreased due to a sedentary lifestyle according to developing the economy throughout the world. It is thought to increase the risk of chronic diseases, including obesity, diabetes, etc. People are interested in walking, which is an easy activity to engage in as an antidote to chronic diseases. The aim of this study is to increase the diminishing physical activity of modem society by inducing walking as part of everyday life through building a walking-based activity-friendly city where people can live merrily, safely and pleasantly. For this purpose, this study conducted a satisfaction survey to dwellers of Jinhae on the physical pedestrian environments which affect determining walking participation and intentions of people, and also provided a valid model to evaluate the effects of the physical environmental factors on walking satisfaction using factor analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The results are summarized as follows. The 18 variables of the physical pedestrian environments were selected based on pre-literature reviews. The results of the satisfaction surveys showed that the satisfaction of crossing aids in segments was highest, while the building feature was the lowest. Factor analysis was run through a two-step process. The first analysis was conducted to examine the adequacy of this factor analysis on the selected 18 variables. As a result, two variables were removed and the remaining 16 variables were extracted to the four factors by second analysis. Each factor was named function of path, effect of traffic, amenity and safety based on the each factor's commonality. Each factor score of the extracted four factors was set as the independent variable, while the overall walking satisfaction was set as the dependent variable. Then, the multiple linear regression analysis was conducted and showed that all four factors had a positive influence on the overall satisfaction of walking, especially the 'function of path' and 'amenity' factors, followed by 'effect of traffic' and 'safety'. The results of this research will be used as foundational data for creating a walking-based activity-friendly city.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.129-142
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• 2017

Accident Black Spot Improvement Project is the representative road safety intervention to eliminate environmental risk factors on the roadway by installing road safety facilities. Although it is one of the main road safety projects in Korea, there has been a lack of effort analyzing the traffic accident reduction effects of this project. In this study, therefore, we selected 4,171 road black spots from 2004 to 2013 and investigated the traffic accident reduction effects of 5 road safety facilities by using "Comparison Group(C-G)" method. Through the analysis, it was found that the number of traffic accidents were lowered by 4.45% with traffic islands, 32.17% with road paved markers, and 24.13% with speed cameras, respectively. However, 0.61% with pedestrian fencing and 1.67% with skid resistant pavement were increased on the other hand. In addition, we also analyzed traffic accident reduction facilities' performance on specific types of collision mentioned in manual on road safety facilities by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. It was shown that the number of bad weather traffic accidents were reduced by 52.96% with road paved markers, pedestrians accidents were reduced by 62.77% with pedestrian fencing and rear-end collisions were reduced by 26.00% with skid resistant pavement.

• The Journal of Sustainable Design and Educational Environment Research
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.1-10
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• 2020

Despite the legal and institutional measures that have been enacted for the safety management of school facilities, the number of school accidents has continued to rise, particularly in regards to the number of accidents related to schools. However, school facilities have had a difficult time creating safe school environments for the school administration and local governments. This is due to the fact that the Office of Education and the Ministry of Education, not the school or educational offices, have insufficient institutional devices such as standards and systems for the promotion of safe school environments. This study attempted to confirm the direction of the improvement of the safety of school facilities. To this end, four safety assessment topics (separation of pedestrians, pedestrian path management, pedestrian visibility, and surrounding risk factors) were derived based on the surveyed data for the safety of the external environment of domestic and international school facilities. 179 school facilities nationwide (kindergartens, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and special schools) were analyzed for current cases of accidents that occurred mainly on school roads. Roughly 50% of the analyzed evaluation scores showed that it is necessary to improve the external environment of school facilities.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1241-1248
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• 2019

In this paper, an auxiliary device was implemented to help blind people more safely from obstacles or risk factors while walking. The ultrasonic sensors detect obstacles in the front, so that the noise gap and the vibration intensity of the buzzer can be heard differently by distance and angle, and so the situation can be perceived by pedestrians. When the ambient light becomes darker than the light intensity set using the CdS resistance value of the light sensor, the LED automatically turns on, makes it easier for pedestrians to recognize the position of the auxiliary device through buzzer if the pedestrian misses the aid using the gyro sensor's slope. Moreover, the location and situation of the blind were transmitted to the caregiver to check safety and behavior using GPS and Bluetooth.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.119-133
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• 2022

Due to the improvement of surveying, mapping and communication techniques, various apps for road direction guides and vehicle navigations have been developed. Although such a development has impacted on walking and driving, there is a limit to improving the daily convenience of the socially impaired people. This is mainly due to the fact that the software have been developed for normal pedestrians and drivers. Therefore, visually impaired people still have problems with the confusion of direction and/or non-provision of risk factors in walking. This study aimed to propose a scheme which constructs data for mobility-impaired or traffic-impaired people based on various geospatial information. The factors and components related to walking for the visually impaired are selected by geospatial data and a walking route guidance network that can be applied to a commercial software. As a result, it was confirmed that road direction guidance would be possible if additional contents, such as braille blocks (dotted/linear), sound signals, bus stops, and bollards are secured. In addition, an initial version of the application software was implemented based on the suggested data model and its usefulness was evaluated to a visually impaired person. To advance the stability of the service in walking for the visually impaired people, various geospatial data obtained by multiple institutes are necessary to be combined, and various sensors and voice technologies are required to be connected and utilized through ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) technology in near future.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.7
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• pp.616-624
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• 2020

This study analyzed the association between the type of transport accident and the associated mortality of elderly inpatients. The findings will contribute to the development and establishment of a systematic and effective policy according to the type of transport accident to reduce the mortality of inpatients. The data on elderly inpatients with transport accidents was extracted from the 2013-2017 Korean National Hospital Discharge In-depth Survey dataset. The data was analyzed by descriptive statistics analysis, chi-square tests and multiple logistic regression analysis. After adjustment for sociodemographic, disease, injury and policy factors, the elderly inpatient deaths due to transport accidents were significantly higher for pedestrian accidents (OR: 2.522 95%, CI: 1.291-4.972), bicycle/cart accidents (OR: 2.809, 95% CI: 1.328-5.942) and motorcycle accidents (OR: 2.330, 95% CI: 1.226-4.819) rather than that for car accidents. Likewise, elderly inpatients have a higher risk of death from other types of transport accidents than those caused by car accidents. However, Korean policies related to transport accidents of elderly inpatients are concentrated on car accidents. Effective policy is needed according to the characteristics of each type of transport accident to reduce the transport accident mortality of elderly inpatients.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.1524-1532
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• 2015

This study analyzed traffic accident characteristics in Chungcheong Region through the factor analysis, cluster analysis and questionnaire survey using traffic accident analysis data for Chungcheong Region in order to improve Korea's traffic safety level. Based on the analysis results, this study suggests traffic safety technologies suitable for the situation of Chungcheong Region. According to the results of the questionnaire survey carried out for transporters in Chungcheong Region, 'the passage of pedestrians and aged people' and 'a problem of lacking visibility' were the biggest threatening factors of major traffic accidents in Chungcheong Region. The facilities required the most were 'lighting equipment in driving at night', and the expected effect by the equipment installation was high. As a result of the factor analysis and cluster analysis using the traffic accident analysis data, traffic accident risk by city type in Chungcheong Region was higher in rural areas, compared to urban areas. Especially, this study confirmed the risks of pedestrian and agricultural machine traffic accidents were high. Therefore, this study suggests three technologies to improve traffic safety level in Chungcheong Region, based on the analysis results.