• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.511-524
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• 2007

Korea has 30 years of experiences in environmental impact assessment (EIA). Although EIA includes sanitation-public health factor, considering health impacts, among 74 unit projects of 17 sections, health impacts haven't been properly considered or have been ignored in many cases. The increasing awareness on the importance of health impacts has triggered this study to seek an optimal introduction scheme of health impact assessment (HIA). The processes of EIA already include screening, scoping, analysis, impact assessment, consultation, document review, decision making and monitoring, in which they would be the essential parts of HIA. In this context, integrating HIA into the existing EIA process could be the most effective way to use the benefits in both legal and procedural processes existed and to avoid the confusion and overlapping since the close relationships between environment and health impacts might be. Furthermore, it is desirable that the existing sanitation-public health factor should be substituted by and extended to environment-health factor with sufficient determinants to properly consider health impacts. When considering the first step of HIA, the prospective and qualitative approach is suitable more than the retrospective and quantitative one due to the lack of database accumulated. Similarly, an approach based on epidemiology and toxicology could analyze the limited evidences and impacts related to human disease, whereas one based on socio-science and psychology could provide the effective means available for predicting how the people and community will act by the change of surroundings. Checklist approach with various and comprehensive health determinants focused on prospective and qualitative methods will be very useful for more convenient and progressive dissemination of HIA. Various checklist approaches of toolkits could be found from HIA documents elsewhere, for example Westminster Toolkit, and they would be helpful to figure out how to develop common procedures and health determinants for checklist, in which the unique characteristics on korean cultural and political context compared to abroad should be carefully considered since checklist would be the most basic and essential part of HIA. After the establishment of checklist and procedural processes, the pilot projects should be conducted. Main purpose of pilot projects is to apparently prove the effectiveness and profitability of HIA. Pilot projects should be implemented to decide the effectiveness and suitability of HIA for future projects, programs and policies, and should be provided as the positive cases that can be achieved through the proper implementation and progress.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.150-156
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• 2018

As the types and usage of chemical increase, modern countries should protect their health and environment from the risk of hazardous chemical. Chemical accidents not only affect humans but also cause huge losses to the environment. Moreover, since its effects do not end in a short period of time, it is necessary to identify the extent of the damage and establish a prevention and response system in advance. In 2015, the Chemical Substances Management Act provided a system for assessing the impact on the people and the environment around the workplace. However, it is difficult to quantitatively evaluate the impact on environmental factors such as vegetation and aquatic, with the current hazard assessment methods. The purpose of this study is to analyze the quantitative risk of environmental receptors. This study improved the existing risk assessment formula by using the environmental vulnerability index and established the end point concentration criterion which can estimate the damage range to environmental media. To verify the results of the study, a virtual accident scenario was selected and a case study was conducted. As a result, the extent of impact on the environmental medium can be calculated, and the degree of environmental risk of the zone can be quantified through the risk analysis considering the environmental vulnerability. This study is expected to increase the reliability of the reliability of the existing risk anaylsis method beacause it is a risk analysis method that can be applied when the environmental factors are absolutely necessary and when the residents and environment are complex.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.88-100
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• 2013

This study evaluated the direct and indirect environmental impacts of various unit operations of a industrial waste incineration plant by using the life cycle assessment tool and reviewed the improvement plan. During the incineration process, the direct environmental impact was decreased with decrease in emission of various air pollutants by incorporating an air pollution prevention facilities. However, an increase in indirect environmental impacts was observed as a consequence of resources and energy of consumption at the various operational facilities. Consequently, quantitative direct and indirect impact were 89.1%, 10.9%, respectively. The environmental impact analysis of system revealed the highest impact of incineration followed by the impacts of other unit processes such as semidry reactor, and bag-filter. The various air pollutants and ashes generated during the incineration process caused the most significant environmental impact. Among the various categories of environmental impact, global warming accounted the highest impact(more than 85%) followed by eutrophication, and abiotic depletion. As a result of the avoided impact by the utilization of heat generated during the waste incineration process, using an incineration heat for steam and electricity obtained the impact reduction of 45.5%, 19.8%. So, during siting of new incineration plant, the utilization of steam generated from the waste combustion is highly considered to reduce the environmental impact.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.1-9
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• 2013

Environmental problems like global warming have now become important issues that should be considered in all industries, including construction. In South Korea, many studies have been conducted to achieve the government's goals of reduction in environmental impacts. However, the research on buildings has only focused on CO2 emission as a research target despite the fact that other environmental impacts resulting from ozone depletion and acidification should also be considered, in addition to global warming. In this regard, this study attempted to propose assessment criteria and methods to evaluate the environmental performance of the structures from various aspects. The environmental impact category can be divided into global impacts, regional impacts, and local impacts. First, global impacts include global warming, ozone layer depletion, and abiotic resource depletion, while regional impacts include acidification, eutrophication, and photochemical oxidation. In addition, noise and vibration occurring in the building construction phase are defined as local impacts. The evaluation methods on the eight environmental impacts will be proposed after analyzing existing studies, and the methods representing each environmental load as monetary value will be presented. The methods presented in this study will present benefits that can be obtained through green buildings with a clear quantitative assessment on structures. Ultimately, it is expected that if the effects of green buildings are clearly presented through the findings of this study, the greening of structures will be actively expanded.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.457-469
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• 2017

In order to conserve soil functions to the highest degree in development projects, it is necessary to identify and manage specific area (so called soil management area) including soils with good or excellent functions. Therefore, in this work, we conducted a preliminary study how to identify soil management area in environmental impact assessment on development projects. To do this, quantitative evaluation was carried out on two example projects, using InVEST model considering a couple of soil functions, i.e., erosion control and carbon sequestration functions. Then, soil management area was identified through overlay analysis. The methodology developed in this study is able to be used widely for more detailed analysis with high resolution and furthermore overlay anaysis with other assessment items. For more perfect assessment, other soil fuctions needed to be taken into account into our methodology.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.725-738
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• 2013

The National Ecosystem Survey in Korea provides information to policy makers for preservation of natural environment and implementation of international agreement. The 1st and 2nd National Ecosystem Survey were carried out between 1986 and 1990, and between 1997 and 2005, respectively. The 3rd National Ecosystem Survey began in 2006 and ended in 2012. In 2013 the pilot survey for the 4th National Ecosystem Survey is ongoing. The 4th National Ecosystem Survey due to the revision of the Natural Environment Conservation Act which has been done every 10 years would change into every five years. It is planned to be conducted from 2014 to 2018. The survey method of the 4th National Ecosystem Survey has been modified to obtain more accurate data for many taxa. The survey for a nocturnal animals will be introduced. In addition, monitoring by setting the grid will get quantitative data seasonally. The vegetation survey will be conducted with a mobile device contained files of aerial image maps including classified vegetation map. National Ecosystem Survey will be improved as follows. First, each survey methods suitable for the purpose should be developed. Second, monitoring methods for obtaining quantitative data should be developed. Finally, the research using the data should be developed in the field of not only ecosystem and biological diversity but also habitat assessment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.178-185
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• 2014

This study investigates the characteristics of environmental impact from the construction phase of a high-speed railway through a Life Cycle Assessment method based on the materials used and the energy consumption of the equipment used according to the design statement. The results reveal that the contributions to environmental impact in the construction sector of a high-speed railway were 89% for civil engineering, 7% for the track system, 2% for stations and 2% for the energy and telecommunication system. In particular, the highest contribution to the impact in the civil engineering category were 54% for Global Warming, 25% for Abiotic Resource Depletion and 8% for Photochemical Oxidant Creation. The main influence factors were the use of remicon and cement. In future, the application of Life Cycle Assessment for the construction sector of railway construction will introduce efficient reduction methods according to the quantitative calculation of environmental impact.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.67-76
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• 1997

The purpose of this research is to draw out the factors affecting the residents' evaluation on valuable animal and vegetation and the naturality of vegetation seen near regional environment. With this purpose, Questionnaire research and vegetation survey focusing on area of types of vegetation and species of big trees were made in 30 points of midstream of Tama River, Tokyo, Japan. The questionnaire research was based on basin environment units in order to be reflective of regional natural environment. The vegetation was classified into 5 types according to its flora and observed the covering area of each points and types through the aerial photograph. In addition, the species of big trees in habitat were listed by the survey. Results as below came out by analyzing the outcome of the questionnaire research and vegetation survey by multiple regression. First, residents are most likely not to distinguish precisely between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of vegetation. Both of the researches are apt to be influenced by quantitative factors of vegetation. Second, residents are assumed to consider forest of big trees, inhabitant of groups of big trees, highly natural.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.29-42
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• 2017

As the "Guidelines for GHG Environmental Assessment" was revised, it pointed out that the developers should evaluate GHG sequestration and storage of the developing site. However, the current guidelines only taking into account the quantitative reduction lost within the development site, and did not consider the qualitative decrease in the carbon sequestration capacity of forest edge produced by developments. In order to assess the quantitative and qualitative effects of vegetation carbon uptake, the CASA-NPP model and satellite image spatial-temporal fusion were used to estimate the annual net primary production in 2005 and 2015. The development projects between 2006 and 2014 were examined for evaluate quantitative changes in development site and qualitative changes in surroundings by development types. The RMSE value of the satellite image fusion results is less than 0.1 and approaches 0, and the correlation coefficient is more than 0.6, which shows relatively high prediction accuracy. The NPP estimation results range from 0 to $1335.53g\;C/m^2$ year before development and from 0 to $1333.77g\;C/m^2$ year after development. As a result of analyzing NPP reduction amount within the development area by type of forest development, the difference is not significant by type of development but it shows the lowest change in the sports facilities development. It was also found that the vegetation was most affected by the edge vegetation of industrial development. This suggests that the industrial development causes additional development in the surrounding area and indirectly influences the carbon sequestration function of edge vegetaion due to the increase of the edge and influx of disturbed species. The NPP calculation method and results presented in this study can be applied to quantitative and qualitative impact assessment of before and after development, and it can be applied to policies related to greenhouse gas in environmental impact assessment.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.297-304
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• 2021

The environmental impact assessment(EIA) project in Korea has undergone changes and revisions in various evaluation items for about 30 years after the introduction of the Environmental Conservation Act (1997). However, despite the importance of land use evaluation items under the current EIA Act, there are insufficient studies to consider. Therefore, this study focused on the land-use evaluation items based on the EIA guidelines, reviewed 90 of the evaluation documents and consultation documents, and tried to suggest implications and supplementary points forthe domestic EIA land-use evaluation items. As a result, the paradigm was changing from land efficiency centered on development in the past to land efficiency centered on the natural environment and resource conservation. However, in spite of the manual for fitting the paradigm change, opinions on the conservation of the natural environment are still being drawn in the consultation document, so it needs improvement. Two improvements in the impact assessment process suggested in this study are the establishment of standardized spatial data and a quantitative impact and reduction method evaluation tool based on it. In particular, there is a need for a plan evaluation tool for land use arrangement and distribution that can solve the needs of minimizing damage to the natural environment and securing green space and a green network.