• Title/Summary/Keyword: Physical environments

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A Study on the Prevalence and Risk Factors of Liver Dysfunction among the Workers in Chemical Factories (화학공장 근로자들의 간기능 이상 유병률 및 위험인자에 관한 연구)

  • Cheong, Hae-Kwan;Kim, Joung-Soon
    • Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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    • v.30 no.1 s.56
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    • pp.103-128
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    • 1997
  • The object of this study is to evaluate the possibility of chemical-induced liver disorder among workers exposed to various chemicals and to classify the the liver function abnormalities by causes and to analyse the risk factors for each liver disorders. A cross-sectional study including questionnaire survey, physical examination, laboratory tests and ultrasonography of liver was conducted on 1,126 workers, 459 workers in a coal chemical plant(company A) and 667 workers in an insulation material manufacturing factory(company B). An industrial hygienist reviewed the chemicals used in both companies and evaluated the work environments to classify the workers by chemical exposure semiquantitatively. The results are as follows: 1. Of 459 workers in company A, 83 workers(18.1%) are classified as nonexposed, group 163(35,5%) as short-term exposure group, 155(33.8%) as intermediately exposed group and 58(12.6%) as long-term exposed group bared on the mean daily exposure to hepatotoxic chemicals evaluated by an industrial hygienist. Of 667 workers in company B, 484(72.6%) workers were classified as nonexposed and 183(35.5%) as exposed group. 2. Workers with SGOT level higher than 40 IU/l were (10.0%) in company A and 77(11.5%) in company 3, and those with SGPT level higher than 35 IU/l were 118(25.7%) in company A and 198(29.7%) in company B. The differences were not significant between companies and between exposure groups(p>0.05). Workers with $\gamma-GT$ level higher than 62 IU/l were 29(6.3%) in company A and 77(11.5%) in company B (p<0.01). The difference between exposure groups was not significant(p>0.05) within companies. Workers with liver function abnormalities(defined as SGOT higher than 40 IU/l or SGPT higher than 35 IU/l) were 338(30.0%) among 1,126 workers. Of 338 workers with live. function abnormalities 139(12.3%) had fatty liver by ultrasonography, 79(7.0%) had alcoholic liver(defined as workers with liver function abnormalities with weekly alcohol consumption greater than 280 g for more than 5 years), 54(4.8%) had hepatitis B, 12(1.1%) had hepatitis C and the other 114(33.7%) was not otherwise classified. Prevalences of alcoholic liver and fatty liver were significantly lower in company A(prevalence ratio 0.24 for alcoholic liver, p<0.001, prevalence ratio 0.76 for fatty liver, p<0.05) but prevalences of liver disorders between exposure groups within companies were not significant(p>0.05). 3. Summary prevalence ratios(SPR) of live. function abnormalities, fatty live. and other liver disorders, adjusted by age and company were not significantly higher in exposed group in any chemicals(p>0.05) but in some chemicals, SPRs were significantly lower. 4. On simple analysis of risk factors for liver function abnormalities, prevalence odds ratio(POR) of those with age between 30 and 39 was 1.54(p<0.01) and those with age ever 40 was 1.51(p<0.01). POR of those with histories of liver disorders and general anesthesia was 1.77(p<0.001) and 4.02 for those with overweight and 6.23 for those with obesity, defined by body mass index(p<0.001). 5. On logistic regression analysis, risk factors of liver function abnormality were fatty liver(POR 2.92 for grade 1, 12.15 for grade 2), presence of hepatitis B surface antigen(POR 3.62) and obesity(POR 5.38 for overweight and 16.52 for obesity). Presence of hepatitis B surface antigen(POR 0.18) was the only preventive facto. of fatty live. Company(POR 0.30) and obesity(POR 2.49 for overweight, 4.52 for obesity) were related to the alcoholic live. Obesity(POR 2.94 for overweight) was the only significant risk factor of hepatitis B and there was no significant risk factor for liver function abnormality not otherwise classified. It is concluded that the evidence of liver disorder related with chemical exposure is not evident in these factories. It is also postulated that fatty liver and alcoholic liver is most common causes of liver function abnormalities among workers and effort for weight control and improvement of life style should be done.

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Rapid Bioassessments of Kap Stream Using the Index of Biological Integrity (생물보전지수(Index of Biological Integrity)의 신속한 생물평가 기법을 이용한 갑천 수계의 평가)

  • Yeom, Dong-Hyuk;Lee, Sung-Kyu;An, Kwang-Guk
    • Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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    • v.19 no.4
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    • pp.261-269
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    • 2001
  • The purpose of present study was to introduce a multimetric approach, so called the Index of Biological Integrity (IBI) as a tool for evaluations of water environments. We used 11 metric systems for the IBI to evaluate stream conditions, based on the fish community, and modified 5 original metric attributes suggested by Karr (1981). Overall IBI values in Kap Stream averaged 36 (n = 5) and ranged 17${\sim}$49, indicating a 'fair condition' according to the modified criteria of Karr (1981) and U.S. EPA (1993). However, there were distinct differences in the IBI values among 5 study sites. The IBI values at sites 1, 2, and 3 were 49, 45, and 41, which indicated 'good${\sim}$excellent', 'good', and 'fair' condition, respectively, while values at sites 4 and 5 were 17 and 29, which indicated 'very poor' and 'poor', respectively. The minimum IBI at site 4 was probably due to continuous inputs of wastewater from wastewater disposal plants. The condition at site 4 resulted in predominance of tolerant species (50%), omnivore species (50%), and high abnormalies (43%). In the mean time, the IBI value at site 5, located near 5km downstream from the site 4, increased compared to that of site 4, and this seemed to be a result of recovery of water quality as the polluted water goes downward. We believe that present bioassessment methodology of IBI applied in this study may be used as a key tool to set up specific goals for stream restoration plans and dentify recovery levels of lotic ecosystems after restoration activities(i.e., prevention of point-source pollutant input, restoration of physical habitats, construction of riparian vegetation) as well as a biological measure diagnosing current stream conditions.

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A Comparative Study of Rain Intensities Retrieved from Radar and Satellite Observations: Two Cases of Heavy Rainfall Events by Changma and Bolaven (TY15) (장마와 볼라벤(태풍 15호)에 동반된 집중호우 레이더관측과 위성관측 자료로부터 도출한 강우강도의 비교연구)

  • Lee, Dong-In;Ryu, Chan-Su
    • Journal of the Korean earth science society
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    • v.33 no.7
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    • pp.569-582
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    • 2012
  • The heavy rainfalls caused large property damages and human casualties. For example, Changma caused 0.25 billion dollars in damages and 57 deaths and 112 missing by accompanying the torrentially convective heavy rainfall in Seoul, 2011. In addition, TY15 (Bolaven) caused a small damage by bringing a relatively small amount of rainfall and strong wind in Gwanju, 2012. The investigation and analyses of these mesoscale processes of rainfall events for different physical properties using KLAPS for weather environments of the above cases were performed. These typical and ideal meoscale systems by better and more favorable cloud systems were chosen to retrieve rain intensity from Radar and Chullian data. The quantitative rain intensities of Radar and Chullian differ greatly from the ground-based gauge values with underestimating over 50 mm/hr at the peak time of hourly maximum rain intensity about over than 85 mm/hr. However, the Radar rain intensity demonstrated approximately lower than 35 mm/hr, and the Chullian rain intensity less than 60 mm/hr for Changma in Seoul, 2011. For typhoon (TY15, Bolaven) in Gwangju, similarly, the quantitative rain intensities of Radar and Chullian differ from the ground-based gauge values. At the peak time, the hourly maximum rain intensity of ground-based gauge was more than 15 mm/hr. However, the Radar rain intensity showed lower than 5 mm/hr, and the Chullian rain intensity lower than 10 mm/hr. Regarding the above two cases of typhoon and Changma, even though Radar and Chullian rain intensities have been underestimated when compared to the ground-based rain intensity, the distributions of time scale features of both Radar and Chullian rain intensities still delineated a similar tendency of rain intensity distribution of the ground-based gauge data.

Community Structure and Distribution of Natural Seaweed Beds on the Eastern Coast of Korea (동해안 천연 해조장의 군집구조와 분포 특성)

  • Park, Gyu Jin;Ju, Hyun;Choi, Ok In;Choi, Chang Geun
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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    • v.23 no.4
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    • pp.338-346
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    • 2017
  • Natural seaweed beds and habitat environments were investigated using quantitative and qualitative methods from May to December 2015 at 3 sites in Gangneung, Uljin, and Busan along the eastern coast of Korea. In total, 9 green, 23 brown, and 64 red algal taxa were identified. The biomass of the seaweed at Gangneung was 173.2 to $613.8wet\;wt.g/m^2$ of Dictyota divaricata, 360.8 to $520.4wet\;wt.g/m^2$ of Symphyocladia linearis, and 25.9 to $470.8wet\;wt.g/m^2$ of Undaria pinnatifida. At Uljin, these numbers were 5.5 to $256.2wet\;wt.g/m^2$ of Plocamium telfarirae and 46.8 to $241.5wet\;wt.g/m^2$ of Agarum clathratum. The biomass of Sargassum coreanum and Ecklonia cava were 388.1 to $6,972.4wet\;wt.g/m^2$ and 194.9 to $958.5wet\;wt.g/m^2$, respectively, at Busan. S. coreanum and E. cava showed higher biomass compared to other seaweed at Busan. The biomass rate represented an average of 19.2 percent of the total population, ranging from 0.0 to 55.5 percent in Gangneung. In Uljin, the average was calculated as 63.8 percent, and this figure was 48.5 percent in Busan. The percentage of barren ground averaged 46.7 percent in Gangneung and 91.1 percent in Uljin. Uljin showed the highest percentage of barren ground compared to other regions. Sea urchin density appeared to be $6.0ind./m^2$ in Gangneung, $7.0ind./m^2$ in Uljin, and $2.0ind./m^2$ in Busan, with the lowest sea urchin density being that of Busan. In conclusion, the composition of species, appearance ratio, and abundance of vegetation found were similar to previous studies, but it is thought that continuous monitoring is needed due to concerns about physical and chemical pollution caused by global warming, climate change, and coastal development.

A Study on The RFID/WSN Integrated system for Ubiquitous Computing Environment (유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 환경을 위한 RFID/WSN 통합 관리 시스템에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Yong-Min;Lee, Jun-Hyuk
    • Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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    • v.49 no.1
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    • pp.31-46
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    • 2012
  • The most critical technology to implement ubiquitous health care is Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) technology which makes use of various sensor technologies, processor integration technology, and wireless network technology-Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)-to easily gather and monitor actual physical environment information from a remote site. With the feature, the USN technology can make the information technology of the existing virtual space expanded to actual environments. However, although the RFID and the WSN have technical similarities and mutual effects, they have been recognized to be studied separately, and sufficient studies have not been conducted on the technical integration of the RFID and the WSN. Therefore, EPCglobal which realized the issue proposed the EPC Sensor Network to efficiently integrate and interoperate the RFID and WSN technologies based on the international standard EPCglobal network. The proposed EPC Sensor Network technology uses the Complex Event Processing method in the middleware to integrate data occurring through the RFID and the WSN in a single environment and to interoperate the events based on the EPCglobal network. However, as the EPC Sensor Network technology continuously performs its operation even in the case that the minimum conditions are not to be met to find complex events in the middleware, its operation cost rises. Moreover, since the technology is based on the EPCglobal network, it can neither perform its operation only for the sake of sensor data, nor connect or interoperate with each information system in which the most important information in the ubiquitous computing environment is saved. Therefore, to address the problems of the existing system, we proposed the design and implementation of USN integration management system. For this, we first proposed an integration system that manages RFID and WSN data based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP). Secondly, we defined the minimum conditions of the complex events to detect unnecessary complex events in the middleware, and proposed an algorithm that can extract complex events only when the minimum conditions are to be met. To evaluate the performance of the proposed methods we implemented SIP-based integration management system.

A Study on Comparison of Outdoor Wind Pressure Performance According to Outdoor Exposure and Acceleration Deterioration Methods of Structural Sealants Applied to Curtain Wall (커튼월에 적용된 구조용 실링재의 옥외폭로와 실내복합열화 처리방법에 따른 내풍압성능 비교연구)

  • Jang, Pil Sung;Hong, Soon Gu;Kim, Sung Rae
    • Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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    • v.19 no.9
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    • pp.279-287
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    • 2018
  • Sealants are an important element of modern architecture and serve as a building protection against weathering by providing barriers against ingress of moisture, air, and other materials. Exposure to a variety of environments often reduces lifespan due to changes in physical, chemical and mechanical characteristics, and UV, humidity, and temperature expansion are important issues that are directly related to durability. In this study, a combined deterioration test chamber was developed to simulate the environment of the open air as an instrument for verifying the durability of structural sealing materials indoors. In order to replicate special weather conditions, such as yellow dust, acid rain, and contamination by microorganisms, it was deemed impossible to replicate the outdoor environment by 100 %, and the results of the results of the results of the external exposure test of the structural sealant and the combined deterioration testing device. As a result of the displacement test of the outdoor exposure test, it was determined that the sealant was breaking apart and that it would be smooth, and the displacement would be up to three times greater than the initial material value of 1 year. The displacement test results of the combined deterioration test device show the tendency to deteriorate, decreasing the elasticity and tensile characteristics. In the case of denatured silicon, the current 400 cycles have been completed to confirm 12 months of degradation of the external exposure. The deformation of the test specimen cannot be verified with the naked eye, so it is considered that the conditions of the specimen are more stable than the silicon sealant. As a result of the outdoor exposure test, if the combined deterioration test device is structured and proposed in the relevant guidance or specification, the anticipated lifespan of 12 months in the actual use environment can be verified indoors and below 3 months later, economically.

Research about a structure system of the bus information system which is applied to the bus stop - Around a problem and preference of Pusan bus information system investigation - (버스정류장에 적용된 버스정보시스템의 구성 체계에 관한 연구 - 부산시 버스정보시스템의 문제점 및 선호도 조사를 중심으로 -)

  • Cha Min-Jun;Hong Kwan-Seon
    • Archives of design research
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    • v.19 no.4 s.66
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    • pp.61-70
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    • 2006
  • The functions and roles in the various fields of modern society are changing into the unified and multiplex structure, which is simultaneous and virtual communication environments beyond physical space and time, by the digital IT technology. The urban traffic system is also being intellectualized in order to solve urban traffic problems and convenient services by using digital IT technology. The bus, which is the one of the most common public transportation, are suffering in the decrease of bus service quality and the bus passengers rate because of the development of other public transportation systems such as the subway and electric railway and by rapidly increasing private cars. By recognizing these problems, many domestic and overseas cities are promoting to introduce the Bus Information System (BIS) to improve service quality of buses through the intelligent traffic system. According to the construction of this new information system called the Bus Information System (BIS), the new bus stop configuration system and design plans are being required to solve the existing bus stop information system. Therefore, this research was conducted to suggest an effective BIS configuration system plan and synthetic design goals based on the investigation the problems of the information system and the BIS configuration system for Busan city. Also, this research are conducted the below actions as follows: First, the literature survey was conducted, such as theoretical documents on the bus stop and the Bus Information System(BIS), Also, the design trend of the BIS was examined through domestic and overseas BIS cases studies. Scondly, the problems related to the information system in Busan city bus stops were investigated to investigate the present state and problems of the Bus Information System (BIS). Finally, as a result of this research, the effective BIS configuration system plan and design approach methods of bus stops were proposed for by Busan city based on the above investigation results.

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A Study about the Direction and Responsibility of the National Intelligence Agency to the Cyber Security Issues (사이버 안보에 대한 국가정보기구의 책무와 방향성에 대한 고찰)

  • Han, Hee-Won
    • Korean Security Journal
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    • no.39
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    • pp.319-353
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    • 2014
  • Cyber-based technologies are now ubiquitous around the glob and are emerging as an "instrument of power" in societies, and are becoming more available to a country's opponents, who may use it to attack, degrade, and disrupt communications and the flow of information. The globe-spanning range of cyberspace and no national borders will challenge legal systems and complicate a nation's ability to deter threats and respond to contingencies. Through cyberspace, competitive powers will target industry, academia, government, as well as the military in the air, land, maritime, and space domains of our nations. Enemies in cyberspace will include both states and non-states and will range from the unsophisticated amateur to highly trained professional hackers. In much the same way that airpower transformed the battlefield of World War II, cyberspace has fractured the physical barriers that shield a nation from attacks on its commerce and communication. Cyberthreats to the infrastructure and other assets are a growing concern to policymakers. In 2013 Cyberwarfare was, for the first time, considered a larger threat than Al Qaeda or terrorism, by many U.S. intelligence officials. The new United States military strategy makes explicit that a cyberattack is casus belli just as a traditional act of war. The Economist describes cyberspace as "the fifth domain of warfare and writes that China, Russia, Israel and North Korea. Iran are boasting of having the world's second-largest cyber-army. Entities posing a significant threat to the cybersecurity of critical infrastructure assets include cyberterrorists, cyberspies, cyberthieves, cyberwarriors, and cyberhacktivists. These malefactors may access cyber-based technologies in order to deny service, steal or manipulate data, or use a device to launch an attack against itself or another piece of equipment. However because the Internet offers near-total anonymity, it is difficult to discern the identity, the motives, and the location of an intruder. The scope and enormity of the threats are not just focused to private industry but also to the country's heavily networked critical infrastructure. There are many ongoing efforts in government and industry that focus on making computers, the Internet, and related technologies more secure. As the national intelligence institution's effort, cyber counter-intelligence is measures to identify, penetrate, or neutralize foreign operations that use cyber means as the primary tradecraft methodology, as well as foreign intelligence service collection efforts that use traditional methods to gauge cyber capabilities and intentions. However one of the hardest issues in cyber counterintelligence is the problem of "Attribution". Unlike conventional warfare, figuring out who is behind an attack can be very difficult, even though the Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has claimed that the United States has the capability to trace attacks back to their sources and hold the attackers "accountable". Considering all these cyber security problems, this paper examines closely cyber security issues through the lessons from that of U.S experience. For that purpose I review the arising cyber security issues considering changing global security environments in the 21st century and their implications to the reshaping the government system. For that purpose this study mainly deals with and emphasis the cyber security issues as one of the growing national security threats. This article also reviews what our intelligence and security Agencies should do among the transforming cyber space. At any rate, despite of all hot debates about the various legality and human rights issues derived from the cyber space and intelligence service activity, the national security should be secured. Therefore, this paper suggests that one of the most important and immediate step is to understanding the legal ideology of national security and national intelligence.

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A Mutual P3P Methodology for Privacy Preserving Context-Aware Systems Development (프라이버시 보호 상황인식 시스템 개발을 위한 쌍방향 P3P 방법론)

  • Kwon, Oh-Byung
    • Asia pacific journal of information systems
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.145-162
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    • 2008
  • One of the big concerns in e-society is privacy issue. In special, in developing robust ubiquitous smart space and corresponding services, user profile and preference are collected by the service providers. Privacy issue would be more critical in context-aware services simply because most of the context data themselves are private information: user's current location, current schedule, friends nearby and even her/his health data. To realize the potential of ubiquitous smart space, the systems embedded in the space should corporate personal privacy preferences. When the users invoke a set of services, they are asked to allow the service providers or smart space to make use of personal information which is related to privacy concerns. For this reason, the users unhappily provide the personal information or even deny to get served. On the other side, service provider needs personal information as rich as possible with minimal personal information to discern royal and trustworthy customers and those who are not. It would be desirable to enlarge the allowable personal information complying with the service provider's request, whereas minimizing service provider's requiring personal information which is not allowed to be submitted and user's submitting information which is of no value to the service provider. In special, if any personal information required by the service provider is not allowed, service will not be provided to the user. P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences) has been regarded as one of the promising alternatives to preserve the personal information in the course of electronic transactions. However, P3P mainly focuses on preserving the buyers' personal information. From time to time, the service provider's business data should be protected from the unintended usage from the buyers. Moreover, even though the user's privacy preference could depend on the context happened to the user, legacy P3P does not handle the contextual change of privacy preferences. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a mutual P3P-based negotiation mechanism. To do so, service provider's privacy concern is considered as well as the users'. User's privacy policy on the service provider's information also should be informed to the service providers before the service begins. Second, privacy policy is contextually designed according to the user's current context because the nomadic user's privacy concern structure may be altered contextually. Hence, the methodology includes mutual privacy policy and personalization. Overall framework of the mechanism and new code of ethics is described in section 2. Pervasive platform for mutual P3P considers user type and context field, which involves current activity, location, social context, objects nearby and physical environments. Our mutual P3P includes the privacy preference not only for the buyers but also the sellers, that is, service providers. Negotiation methodology for mutual P3P is proposed in section 3. Based on the fact that privacy concern occurs when there are needs for information access and at the same time those for information hiding. Our mechanism was implemented based on an actual shopping mall to increase the feasibility of the idea proposed in this paper. A shopping service is assumed as a context-aware service, and data groups for the service are enumerated. The privacy policy for each data group is represented as APPEL format. To examine the performance of the example service, in section 4, simulation approach is adopted in this paper. For the simulation, five data elements are considered: $\cdot$ UserID $\cdot$ User preference $\cdot$ Phone number $\cdot$ Home address $\cdot$ Product information $\cdot$ Service profile. For the negotiation, reputation is selected as a strategic value. Then the following cases are compared: $\cdot$ Legacy P3P is considered $\cdot$ Mutual P3P is considered without strategic value $\cdot$ Mutual P3P is considered with strategic value. The simulation results show that mutual P3P outperforms legacy P3P. Moreover, we could conclude that when mutual P3P is considered with strategic value, performance was better than that of mutual P3P is considered without strategic value in terms of service safety.

Attitudes and Problems of Urban Parks, in Taegu City, Korea (도시공원(都市公園)의 속성(屬性)과 문제점(問題點))

  • Choi, Seok-Joo
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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    • v.2 no.2
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    • pp.205-217
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    • 1996
  • Today in the industrial society, the urban park is the place for citizens' health, recreation, exercise, and education. This is a very important place as a fine sight and maintenance of public security. As the results of rapid economic growth during the last thirty years, citizens are in the age of material civilization and are challenged with many serious urban problems such as pollution, noise, traffic congestion, human alienation, etc. Rapid material civilization brought to citizens' mental and physical diseases. To some of the problems, it is necessary that we should have proper leisure and recreation facilities, and that we should have the active, positive posture to them. Especially we need the out door recreational spaces and facilities. But nowadays the urban parks are given little thought in spites of the necessity of parks which should be used as a recreational spaces in the urban areas. So, This study attempt to comprehend the function, quantity and quality of the urban park system in Taegu. It is clear that the quantity is inappropriate. Because of inappropriate disposition and management, its coefficiency of utilization is low. In view of the population and park ratio, Dong Gu, Nam Gu, Suseong Gu and Dalseong Gun have comparative good, environments. However, Dalseo Qu, Seo Gu and Jung Gu have less geographical features. There are some methods to provide expansion of the aggregate of urban parks. We can use the school-grounds and their facilities. which were moved from C.B.D. to the outskirts of Daegu, or some parts of urban redevelopment, or the riverside of Sincheon river. In the urban park-program, users' satisfaction-factors are analyzed. We must reconsider the efficiency. The above problems are improved. Active administration and inhabitants' Positive participation are demanded so that the sound development of cities and daily life-surroundings are promoted.

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