• Journal of the Architectural Institute of Korea Planning & Design
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.117-128
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to identify the physical safety factors and indicators needed to create an age-friendly city where elderly people can live safely and continuously in the era of aging and to evaluate the differences between the five urban communities. For the study, AHP analysis was conducted to calculate the importance of factors and indicators, based on a checklist was made this. A questionnaire survey was conducted on the degree of physical safety perceived by the elderly people aged 65 and older living in Seoul, the difference between the five urban communities in Seoul was confirmed. The research finding are summarized as follows: The score of evaluating grade was the highest in the northwest, northeast was the lowest followed by the northwest, downtown, southeast, southwest, northeast. Among the physical safety factors, the safety of outdoor spaces and buildings was the highest in the downtown and the lowest in the southwest. On pedestrian safety, the downtown was the highest and the lowest was northeast. Regards to the transportation safety, the northwest was the highest and the northeast was the lowest. Housing security was the best in the northwest and the lowest was the northeast.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.109-120
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• 2019

Purpose: This study is the analysis of the relationship between the physical safety of the urban spaces and the aging in place tendency of the elderly. Method: For analysis, the physical safety of the urban space is divided into four elements: outdoor space and building safety, pedestrian safety, transportation safety and living safety, and for aging in place, the 5-point Likert scale was used. A questionnaire survey was conducted for 411 elderly people aged 65 or older living in Seoul for each of the five urban community in Seoul. Results: 78.6% of the respondents answered that they are good at continuing to live in the present living area, the elderly living in Seoul has the high tendency of aging in place. The ratio of respondents who answered that good at living continuedly is in the order of southeast, northwest, southwest, northeast, and downtown. Conclusion: When the percentage of respondents who answered that they are good at staying in the current living area is high, not only the overall physical safety but also the average of the physical safety factors of the urban space are also high, physical safety of urban spaces is a factor affecting aging in place. Based on the results of the study, it can be applied as a method to create a safe city in the process of city development or urban renewal in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.49-56
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• 2019

Urban green spaces have been contributing to the improvement of environmental, mental, and physical health for humans. In addition, recent studies showed the potential role of vegetation in reducing the amount of crime in inner-city neighborhoods at the micro-scale level. However, little is known about the positive role of urban green areas in improving urban safety at the regional level. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between urban green areas and actual outdoor crime rates, while also considering socio-demographic factors. The study area is the city of Austin, Texas, USA, which consists of 506 block groups. This study utilized socio-demographic factors based on U.S. Census data and vegetation-related factors utilizing GIS and ENVI software. For analyses, the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and an ordinary least square (OLS) regression were utilized. The results from ANOVA showed that yearly crime rates per acre for areas having 0%~25% trees in their neighborhoods were 0.46% and 1.05% higher than those of having 25%~50% and >50% trees in the neighborhoods, respectively. The results from the OLS regression represented that income, NDVI and park rates in neighborhoods were negatively associated with the crime rate per acre, whereas the percentage of minorities and the percentage of teenage school dropouts were positively associated with the crime rate per acre. This study implies that urban green areas may help to improve the safety of urban areas.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.115-126
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• 2018

A new urban paradigm that moves from a vehicle-centric to pedestrian-centric culture should be considered to improve the quality of the pedestrian environments for women, children, senior citizens, and disabled persons as well as to promote community unification by providing general movement rights to everyone. This study was implemented to provide decent alternatives to improve street spaces. The street spaces around the Commercial and Residential Area No.1 located in the Administrative-Centered City, Sejong Special Autonomic City, were selected to analyze and define the status of the walkways and the street spaces. Satellite imagery and numerical maps were used to collect geographic data. Practical and actual surveys for the selected sites were performed to analyze the street status and the pedestrian status. Based on the all collected data, analysis results, and literature reviews, the questionnaire was made, and 315 inquiries qualified for analysis. The physical status of all four study sites was the highest level, Grade A, and green open spaces were relatively sufficient. As a result, the factors obtained from the factor analysis have an impact on the satisfaction of the pedestrian streets in the commercial area. The factors are as followed Design > Convenience > Roadside trees and rest areas > Safety > Safety protective facilities > Transportation and information facilities > Continuity > Basic state of road surfaces > Comfortability, and in the residential area: Transportation and information facilities > Basic state of road surfaces > Comfort > Convenience > Continuity > Design > Illumination and crime prevention facilities > Safety > Roadside trees and rest areas.

• International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.345-364
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• 2021

Developments in the understanding of fire behaviour for large open-plan spaces typical of tall buildings have been greatly outpaced by the rate at which these buildings are being constructed and their characteristics changed. Numerous high-profile fire-induced failures have highlighted the inadequacy of existing tools and standards for fire engineering when applied to highly-optimised modern tall buildings. With the continued increase in height and complexity of tall buildings, the risk to the occupants from fire-induced structural collapse increases, thus understanding the performance of complex structural systems under fire exposure is imperative. Therefore, an accurate representation of the design fire for open-plan compartments is required for the purposes of design. This will allow for knowledge-driven, quantifiable factors of safety to be used in the design of highly optimised modern tall buildings. In this paper, we review the state-of-the-art experimental research on large open-plan compartment fires from the past three decades. We have assimilated results collected from 37 large-scale compartment fire experiments of the open-plan type conducted from 1993 to 2019, covering a range of compartment and fuel characteristics. Spatial and temporal distributions of the heat fluxes imposed on compartment ceilings are estimated from the data. The complexity of the compartment fire dynamics is highlighted by the large differences in the data collected, which currently complicates the development of engineering tools based on physical models. Despite the large variability, this analysis shows that the orders of magnitude of the thermal exposure are defined by the ratio of flame spread and burnout front velocities (V_S / V_BO), which enables the grouping of open-plan compartment fires into three distinct modes of fire spread. Each mode is found to exhibit a characteristic order of magnitude and temporal distribution of thermal exposure. The results show that the magnitude of the thermal exposure for each mode are not consistent with existing performance-based design models, nevertheless, our analysis offers a new pathway for defining thermal exposure from realistic fire scenarios in large open-plan compartments.