• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.165-173
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• 2017

PURPOSES : The current practice in car headlight visibility performance evaluation is based on the luminous intensity and illuminance of headlight. Such practice can be inappropriate from a visibility point of view where visibility indicates abilities to perceive an object ahead on the road. This study aimed at evaluating the appropriateness of current headlight evaluation method. METHODS : This study measured the luminance of object and road surface at unlit roadways. The variables were measured by vehicle type and by headlight lamp type. Based on the measurements, the distance where drivers can perceive an object ahead was calculated and then compared against such distance obtained by conventional visibility performance evaluation. RESULTS : The evaluation method based on illuminance of headlight is not appropriate when viewed from the visibility concept that is based on object-perceivable distance. Further, the results indicated a shorter object-perceiving distance even when road surface luminance is higher, thereby suggesting that illuminance of headlight and luminance of road surface are not the representative indices of nighttime visibility. CONCLUSIONS : Considering that this study utilized limited vehicle types and that road surface (background) luminance can vary depending on the characteristics of the given road surface, it would likely go too far to argue that this study's visibility performance evaluation results can get generalized to other conditions. Regardless, there is little doubt that the current performance evaluation criterion which is based on illuminance, is unreasonable. There should be future endeavors on the current subject which will need to explore study conditions further, under which more experiments should be conducted and effective methodologies developed for evaluating automotive headlight visibility performance. Needs are recognized particularly in the development of headlight visibility performance evaluation methodology which will take into account road surface (background) luminance and luminance contrast from various perspectives as the former indicates the driver's perception of the front road alignment and the latter being indicative of object perception performance.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.57-66
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• 2015

PURPOSES: Nighttime driving is very different from daytime driving because drivers must obtain nighttime sight-distances based on road lights and headlights. Unfortunately, nighttime driving conditions in Korea are far from ideal due to poor lighting and an insufficient number of road lights and inadequate operation and maintenance of delineators. This study is conducted to develop new standards for nighttime road visibility based on experiments of driver perception for nighttime visibility conditions. METHODS : In the study, perception level and satisfaction of nighttime visibility were investigated. A total of 60 drivers participated, including 34 older drivers and 31 young drivers. To evaluate driver perceptions of nighttime road visibility, fuzzy set theory was used because the conventional analysis methods for driver perception are limited in effectiveness for considering the characteristics of perception which are subjective and vague, and are generally expressed in terms of linguistic terminologies rather than numerical parameters. RESULTS : This study found that levels of nighttime visibility, as perceived by drivers, are remarkably similar to their satisfactions in different nighttime driving conditions with a log-function relationship. Older drivers evaluated unambiguously degree of nighttime visibility but evaluations by young drivers regarding it were unclear. CONCLUSIONS : A minimum value of brightness on roads was established as YUX 30, based on final analyzed results. In other words, road lights should be installed and operated to obtain more than YUX 30 brightness for the safety and comfort of nighttime driving.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.4419-4441
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• 2016

A cause of vehicle accidents is the reduced visibility due to bad weather conditions such as fog. Therefore, an onboard vision system should take visibility detection into account. In this paper, we propose a simple and effective approach for measuring the visibility distance using a single camera placed onboard a moving vehicle. The proposed algorithm is controlled by a few parameters and mainly includes camera parameter estimation, region of interest (ROI) estimation and visibility computation. Thanks to the ROI extraction, the position of the inflection point may be measured in practice. Thus, combined with the estimated camera parameters, the visibility distance of the input foggy image can be computed with a single camera and just the presence of road and sky in the scene. To assess the accuracy of the proposed approach, a reference target based visibility detection method is also introduced. The comparative study and quantitative evaluation show that the proposed method can obtain good visibility detection results with relatively fast speed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.1-7
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• 2007

In this paper, It evaluated visibility about Metal Halide Lamp(MHL), High Pressure Sodium Lamp(HPS) and PLS(Plasma Lighting System) as Road lighting source in fog conditions. To evaluate visibility, it analyzed valuation of subjects about each light sources in special fog conditions. In result, it obtained that High Pressure Sodium Lamp has best visibility in photopic vision and PLS has best visibility in scotopic vision. This result is expected to help about select of Road lighting source.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.31-42
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• 1997

Visibility has been used for Visual Impact Assessment and Buildingheight Control. The purpose of this study is to elaborate visibility analysis technique in GIS, and to design a visual information system baed on this technique for diverse application. The results of this study are as follows : 1) By classifying visibility analysis techniques into two groups, Each one's merits and demerits were investigated. Practically GIS visibility analysis by DTM model using contour map and investigating it by means of site-observation can be the most effective method. 2) A visibility analysis techniquwe for V.I.A. and B.H.C. was presented by studying GIS visibility analysis by means of DTM model using contour map. There were 5 problems. 3) Adequate analysis techniques were presented according to the landscape factor-road, ship-route, port, mountain, etc. 4) Viewing distance from road and ship-route in visual corridor, landma가 visibility and distance, the angle of incidence and invisible region's depth are helpful for land scape management or land use planning.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.131-141
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• 2016

PURPOSES : While road networks are becoming increasingly complex, traffic signs are being indiscriminately installed and operated, which makes drivers who depend on traffic signs to reach their destination confused and unable to understand road information efficiently. In order to promptly and exactly guide road users to their destinations, traffic signs should be able to satisfy the functions of connectivity, visibility, and location suitability. However, the results of a site survey shows that most of the traffic signs currently installed in the Jeollanam-do Province do not satisfy these functions. METHODS : This study analyzed the problems of traffic signs after an actual site survey and focused on a total on 9,353 traffic signs and 70 road routes in Jeollanam-do Province. RESULTS : This study analyzed the problems of traffic signs based on their required functions (connectivity, visibility, suitability) and suggested improvements by establishing a guide system that considered the problems found in the study. CONCLUSIONS : The guide system can be utilized as a basic material that provides efficient road information for future installation and maintenance of traffic signs in Jeollanam-do Province.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.385-392
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• 2013

A key element of the fog warning system to prevent large traffic accidents is a visibility measurement device. Recently, the need for it that is similar to the human visual sense and cheap and accurate than expensive fog sensors is increasing. In this paper, we present the performance evaluation and the economic analysis of the Road Visibility Measurement System (RVMS), which is developed for measuring the road visibility through a CCTV camera. For experiments, we have installed a CCTV camera, a fog sensor, and visibility signs at the Yeo-ju Test Road on the Central Inland Expressway. We evaluated the measurements from RVMS and the fog sensor based on observations. The result shows RVMS outperforms the fog sensor with respect to measurement stability and correctness. We also show RVMS has higher economic feasibility and various applications. RVMS can prevent the traffic accidents caused by severe fog and enhance the process of the wide-area visibility information system significantly.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.63-70
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• 2021

Public Signs guiding drivers on the road should help make decisions within a short period of time, so appropriate information should be effectively expressed at the point. Currently, the road marking rules revised by the law show a significant change in the type of information, expression method, and weight of expression compared to existing road signs to be based on road name addresses. This study analyzed whether the revised road signs changed based on the road name were effective in perspective of perception-cognition-understanding-projection and examined whether they provided appropriate information for the actual driving environment. Based on the analyzed information, an experiment was conducted to present an improved design, evaluate the degree of visibility compared to existing road name-oriented signs, and a qualitative investigation was conducted on the suitability of the sign contents. Through this, it is expected that more suitable driving information and measures to increase intuitive visibility can be reviewed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.1-6
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• 2011

The elder population with 65 years old or more in Korea has been entered into an aging society as 9.1[%] in 2005 to 14.3[%] in 2018. The elder population in 2026 will be expected to 20.8[%] with the rapid aging society. In this study, there has been conducted a study on development of headlamp for elder friendly vehicle in order to ffrom two different groups, one group for elder with over 65 ages, the other group for compared ages(20 ages, 30~50 ages). Glare test and forward visibility test were performed on wet and dry road conditions. As the result of these tests, it showed to prefer headlamp installed partially yellow coated bulb, which gives warm feeling on dry road condition. Forward visibility of headlamp which developed to fit on wet road condition is similar to existing HID headlamp. Glare was evaluated less than halogen and HID headlamp. However, it need to more improve glare and forward visibility performance of headlamp for old drivers.

• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.107-115
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• 2014

Visibility of the road influence the safe driving because it recognizes the obstacle on the road. In this paper, we propose a mobile data acquisition and processing system for evaluating road visibility at night. And it was converted efficiently with mobile images and archived for spatial analysis of road-visibilities at night. This was applied to the following techniques to the system. Low-power computing units, open an image processing library, GPU-based acceleration techniques and document database techniques, etc. And converting the RGB image to the YUV color system, which was integrated the brightness component and the spatial information. High performance Android devices were used to collect brightness data on roads and it was confirmed whether this prototype was to determine the spatial distribution of such acquisition and management systems for spatial-assessments of road visibility at night.