• Journal of Wellbeing Management and Applied Psychology
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.13-18
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• 2023

Purpose: The small-scale environmental impact assessment has been in operation since its implementation in August 2000, and is a system that meets the purpose of sustainable development in consideration of the environment in areas requiring conservation. However, when preparing a small environmental impact assessment report, the contents of the reduction measures are too qualitative, or reports are prepared to simply list the compliance stipulated by individual laws, and the contents of consultations prepared by consultative agencies and review agencies are not much different. In addition, the direction of consultation on development projects for similar locations of the same project type is frequently changed by reflecting the subjective judgment of the consultative officer of the Ministry of Environment (Environment Agency). Therefore, this study attempted to improve the establishment of measures to reduce the existing simple listing of qualitative contents and the inconsistent presentation of review opinions by consultative agencies and review agencies. Research design, data and methodology: The research method extracted absolute evaluation items and relative evaluation items among small environmental impact assessment items, analyzed and presented detailed items, and prepared a distribution table for each section according to the details of the relative evaluation items, and presented them as a table. Results: This study was conducted to derive uniform results with objective indicators in the preparation and consultation process of a small-scale environmental impact assessment. Conclusions: Once a quantitative evaluation is established, the consultant can objectively determine and process the environmental impact.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.402-412
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• 2022

Objective: To evaluate the image quality and lesion detectability of lower-dose CT (LDCT) of the abdomen and pelvis obtained using a deep learning image reconstruction (DLIR) algorithm compared with those of standard-dose CT (SDCT) images. Materials and Methods: This retrospective study included 123 patients (mean age ± standard deviation, 63 ± 11 years; male:female, 70:53) who underwent contrast-enhanced abdominopelvic LDCT between May and August 2020 and had prior SDCT obtained using the same CT scanner within a year. LDCT images were reconstructed with hybrid iterative reconstruction (h-IR) and DLIR at medium and high strengths (DLIR-M and DLIR-H), while SDCT images were reconstructed with h-IR. For quantitative image quality analysis, image noise, signal-to-noise ratio, and contrast-to-noise ratio were measured in the liver, muscle, and aorta. Among the three different LDCT reconstruction algorithms, the one showing the smallest difference in quantitative parameters from those of SDCT images was selected for qualitative image quality analysis and lesion detectability evaluation. For qualitative analysis, overall image quality, image noise, image sharpness, image texture, and lesion conspicuity were graded using a 5-point scale by two radiologists. Observer performance in focal liver lesion detection was evaluated by comparing the jackknife free-response receiver operating characteristic figures-of-merit (FOM). Results: LDCT (35.1% dose reduction compared with SDCT) images obtained using DLIR-M showed similar quantitative measures to those of SDCT with h-IR images. All qualitative parameters of LDCT with DLIR-M images but image texture were similar to or significantly better than those of SDCT with h-IR images. The lesion detectability on LDCT with DLIR-M images was not significantly different from that of SDCT with h-IR images (reader-averaged FOM, 0.887 vs. 0.874, respectively; p = 0.581). Conclusion: Overall image quality and detectability of focal liver lesions is preserved in contrast-enhanced abdominopelvic LDCT obtained with DLIR-M relative to those in SDCT with h-IR.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.189-200
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• 2012

Many companies have endeavored to build a quality cost management system in order to be more productive business organization. This study shows the detail procedures of constructing a quality cost management system which is believed to be appropriate for their business system. That is, the method to calculate the quality cost and the linking logic between the quality improvement and its financial impact are explained based on a particular industry case. In this sense, the changes of business performance measures such as market share, customer satisfaction, etc. were analyzed in the longitudinal perspective for the consecutive 4 years (2003~2006). As the quantitative results of this study, the improvement activities based on the quality cost management system resulted in the 32% reduction of quality cost and the 121% increase of business profit, compared 2005 with 2006. In the qualitative perspective, the successive practice of quality cost reduction and the job information sharing in business unit were obtained by providing the best practices and bench-marking cases. Finally, the customer satisfaction has increased so that the customer-friendly management system has been accomplished. With these efforts, the 3.4% increase of the market share and the 3% increase of the customer satisfaction were obtained in 2005. As the future study, the current study can be extended to the concept of COPQ (cost of poor quality) which focuses on the hidden quality cost of the whole business activities. Such extension of analysis will help us understand the wider role of a quality cost management system in the business.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.75-86
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• 2024

Hydrogen has been selected as one of the key technologies for reducing CO₂ emissions to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. However, hydrogen safety issues should be fully guaranteed before the commercial and widespread utilization of hydrogen. Here, a bow-tie risk assessment is conducted for the hydrogen fuel supply system in a gas turbine power plant, which can be a mass consumption application of hydrogen. The bow-tie program is utilized for a qualitative risk assessment, allowing the analysis of the causes and consequences according to the stages of accidents. This study proposed an advanced bow-tie method, which includes the barrier criticality matrix and visualized maps of quantitative risk reduction. It is based on evaluating the importance of numerous barriers for the extent of their impact. In addition, it emphasizes the prioritization and concentrated management of high-importance barriers. The radar chart of a bow tie allows the visual comparison of risk levels before/after the application of barriers (safety measures). The risk reduction methods are semi-quantitatively analyzed utilizing the criticality matrix and radar chart, and risk factors from multiple aspects are derived. For establishing a secure hydrogen fuel storage system, the improvements suggested by the bow-tie risk assessment results, such as 'Ergonomic equipment design to prevent human error' and 'Emergency shutdown system,' will enhance the safety level. It attempts to contribute to the development and enhancement of an efficient safety management system by suggesting a method of calculating the importance of barriers based on the bow-tie risk assessment.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.595-607
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• 2010

This paper addresses the problem of reducing the speckle noise in SAR images by wavelet transformation, using a non-local means(NLM) filter originated for Gaussian noise removal. Log-transformed SAR image makes multiplicative speckle noise additive. Thus, non-local means filtering and wavelet thresholding are used to reduce the additive noise, followed by an exponential transformation. NLM filter is an image denoising method that replaces each pixel by a weighted average of all the similarly pixels in the image. But the NLM filter takes an acceptable amount of time to perform the process for all possible pairs of pixels. This paper, also proposes an alternative strategy that uses the t-test more efficiently to eliminate pixel pairs that are dissimilar. Extensive simulations showed that the proposed filter outperforms many existing filters terms of quantitative measures such as PSNR and DSSIM as well as qualitative judgments of image quality and the computational time required to restore images.

• Transactions of the Korean hydrogen and new energy society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.66-74
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• 2024

This study addresses the escalating issue of worldwide hydrogen gas accidents, which has seen a significant increase in occurrences. To comprehensively evaluate the risks associated with hydrogen, a two approach was employed in this study. Firstly, a qualitative risk assessment was conducted using the bow-tie method. Secondly, a quantitative consequence analysis was carried out utilizing the areal locations of hazardous atmospheres (ALOHA) model. The study applied this method to two incidents, the hydrogen explosion accident occurred at the Muskingum River power plant in Ohio, USA, 2007 and the hydrogen storage tank explosion accident occurred at the K Technopark water electrolysis system in Korea, 2019. The results of the risk assessments revealed critical issues such as deterioration of gas pipe, human errors in incident response and the omission of important gas cleaning facility. By analyzing the cause of accidents and assessing risks quantitatively, the effective accident response plans are proposed and the effectiveness is evaluated by comparing the effective distance obtained by ALOHA simulation. Notably, the implementation of these measures led to a significant 54.5% reduction in the risk degree of potential explosions compared to the existing risk levels.

• Journal of Wetlands Research
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.354-364
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• 2019

Sri Lanka is an island nation susceptible to climate-related disasters and extreme weather events. Kurunegala City is the developing capital city of the North-Western Province of Sri Lanka. Changes in rainfall patterns and a steadily increasing annual average temperature amounting to 0.69±0.37℃ were observed in the city area. Generally, urban areas are at risk due to the lack of climate change adaptation provisions incorporated in the development plans. This study was conducted to investigate the characteristics of Krunegala City, Sri Lanka and develop an appropriate climate change adaptation plan for the city. Site investigation and qualitative risk assessment were conducted to devise a plan relevant to the climate change adaptation needs of the city. Qualitative risk analyses revealed that drinking water, water resources, and health and infrastructure risks were among the major concerns in Kurunegala City. Low impact development (LID) technologies were found to be applicable to induce non-point source pollutant reduction, relieve urban heat island phenomenon, and promote sound water circulation systems. These technologies can be effective means of alleviating water shortage and reducing urban temperature. The measures and strategies presented in this study can serve as reference for developing climate change adaptation plans in areas experiencing similar adverse effects of climate change.

• Journal of Oriental Neuropsychiatry
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.191-203
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• 2024

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of an integrated medical service model for a fibromyalgia patient and their caregiver, focusing on reducing pain and improving quality of life. Methods: A single-case study design was employed, involving a fibromyalgia patient and their primary caregiver treated at W University Hospital. The integrated medical service program, based on the Ministry of Health and Welfare's model, included medical consultations and complementary therapies such as psychological counseling, art therapy, music therapy, horticultural therapy, yoga, and meditation. The program was conducted weekly for 8 weeks, with each session lasting up to 100 minutes. Data collection involved both quantitative and qualitative assessments. Quantitative data included demographic surveys, psychological tests, health-related quality of life measures, pain indices, and sleep quality indices. Qualitative data were gathered through feedback evaluations and emotional assessments. Results: The patient showed improvements in mobility, self-care, daily activities, and anxiety/depression, with EQ-VAS scores increasing from 20 to 40 and pain perception decreasing from 67.41 to 42.58. The caregiver reported reduced anxiety/depression and an increase in EQ-VAS scores from 95 to 98. Both patient and caregiver exhibited emotional changes, with decreased depression and increased happiness. However, the patient showed an increase in fear and anger. Conclusions: The integrated medical service model positively impacted the emotional and psychological well-being of the fibromyalgia patient and their caregiver. Despite the limitations of a small sample size and a single-case study design, the findings suggest that an integrated approach can be beneficial. Larger-scale studies are needed to confirm and generalize these results.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.123-133
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• 2015

Purpose - The Korean government has devised intermodal transportation policies and granted subsidies to shippers and logistics companies that made a conversion of transportation means through the policies. This provides support by expanding the complex uniform railroad transportation and overhauling the deteriorated railroad facilities. As for 2013, however, the freight transportation percentage of railroad was 4.5% in tons and 8.5% in ton kilometers. Meanwhile, since the 1990s, developed countries such as the U.S. and Europe have been trying to expand intermodal freight transport with a legal and institutional support to build a logistics system corresponding with social and economic environmental changes. In this study, I set out to examine the effects of the intermodal freight transport policies in the EU and the U.S., and to explore the direction of setting up a rail intermodal transport system in South Korea. Research design, data, and methodology - The paper used a qualitative research methodology through the literature review. First, was an overview of Intermodal transportation in the EU, U.S. and UN. Second, it describes the development of transport in Europe and the U.S. with particular emphasis on intermodal freight transport. Third, it explores the direction of setting up a intermodal freight transport in South Korea. The last section contains concluding remarks. Results - As for the EU, it has been promoting integration between transport and intermodal logistics network designs while utilizing ITS or ICT and supports for rail freight intermodal by giving reduction to a facilities fee or subsidizing for rail freight in order to minimize the cost of external due to freight transport. On the other hand, as for the U.S., it has been made up of an industrial-led operating project and has been promoting it to improve accessibility between intermodal hubs and cargo terminals through intermodal corridor program, and an intermodal cargo hub access corridor projects, etc. Moreover, it has tried to construct intermodal transport system using ITS or ICT and to remove Barrier. As a result, in these countries, the proportion of intermodal freight transport is going to be the second significant transport compared with rail and maritime transport. An Effective rail intermodal transport system is needed in South Korea, as seen in the case of these countries. In order to achieve this object, the following points are required to establish radical infrastructure policy; diversify investment financing measures taken under public-private partnerships, legal responsibilities, improvement of utilization of existing facilities to connect the railway terminal and truck terminal, and enhancement service competitiveness through providing cargo tracking and security information that combines the ITS and ICT. Conclusions - This study will be used as a basis for policy and support for intermodal freight transport in South Korea. In the future, it is also necessary to examine from the perspective of the shipper companies using the rail intermodal transport, ie, recognition of shipper, needed institutional supports, and transportation demand forecasting and cost-effective analysis of the railway infrastructure systems improvement.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.25-33
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• 2023

Noise generated during the acquisition and transmission of CT images acts as a factor that degrades image quality. Therefore, noise removal to solve this problem is an important preprocessing process in image processing. In this paper, we remove noise by using a deformable convolutional autoencoder (DeCAE) model in which deformable convolution operation is applied instead of the existing convolution operation in the convolutional autoencoder (CAE) model of deep learning. Here, the deformable convolution operation can extract features of an image in a more flexible area than the conventional convolution operation. The proposed DeCAE model has the same encoder-decoder structure as the existing CAE model, but the encoder is composed of deformable convolutional layers and the decoder is composed of conventional convolutional layers for efficient noise removal. To evaluate the performance of the DeCAE model proposed in this paper, experiments were conducted on CT images corrupted by various noises, that is, Gaussian noise, impulse noise, and Poisson noise. As a result of the performance experiment, the DeCAE model has more qualitative and quantitative measures than the traditional filters, that is, the Mean filter, Median filter, Bilateral filter and NL-means method, as well as the existing CAE models, that is, MAE (Mean Absolute Error), PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and SSIM. (Structural Similarity Index Measure) showed excellent results.