• Journal of Adhesion and Interface
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.110-116
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• 2016

A decrease in the retro-reflectivity of glass-bead-covered road paint because of a rainwater film significantly reduces the visibility of drivers at night, and has been considered as a critical cause of traffic accidents. For enhanced visibility, the microencapsulation of hydrophobically modified $SrAl_2O_4:Eu^{2+}$,$Dy^{3+}$ phosphorescent phosphor was carried out via suspension polymerization of methyl methacrylate (MMA). The effects of surface modification agent and radical initiator types, loading amount of phosphorescent phosphor, and microcapsule size on the phosphor content ($W_{TGA}$) in the luminous poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) microcapsules were investigated by thermogravimetric analyses (TGA). It was found that the $W_{TGA}$ value was ranged from 7 wt% to 81 wt%, which suggests suspension polymerization is suitable for the preparation of luminous microcapsules with a wide range of phosphor content. At a lower loading amount of phosphor, the $W_{TGA}$ value obviously increased as the microcapsule size decreased; however, the $W_{TGA}$ values with a higher loading amount of phosphor were less affected by the microcapsule size. The luminous microcapsules with the size range of $425{\sim}710{\mu}m$ were collected and tested as a luminous road lanes. It was found that luminance intensities of the microcapsule-coated plates remained higher than $300mcd/m^2$ for up to 100 s in darkness after 20 min of light emitting diode lamp irradiation. The results suggest that the luminous microcapsules can be a candidate for the replacement of glass beads for enhanced visibility of drivers.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.35-45
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• 2008

Realtime visibility measurement using camera is a new method which can collect some realtime visibility data similar to those of the human eyes, and can replace the existing methods using the expensive optical equipment. There have been a few attempts to measure visibility by extracting depth and three-dimensional structure under bad weather conditions. However, if there are many movements of objects in the image, these approaches seem to be inappropriate. In addition, the realtime visibility measurement will require a relatively simple and fast processing. Typically the contrast degrades exponentially in the bad weather. Therefore, in this paper we propose an easy and quick method that extract contrast from images using a moving area filter and measure visibility by mathematically modelling of the relationship between image contrast and visibility. The moving area filter is used for removing the area of the sky and moving objects that affect visibility measurement on images. The method proposed here can make possible not only realtime visibility measurement from images taken by CCD cameras, but also steady visibility measurement by using the moving area filter in case of much traffic on the road.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.127-134
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• 2016

PURPOSES : Visibility of lanes on the road improves as retro-reflectivity rises. This helps reduce traffic accidents at nighttime or in bad weather. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of improved visibility on reduction of traffic accidents when the color of the lane in the median of the highway was changed from yellow to white. METHODS : In order to evaluate the accident reduction effect of the white left shoulder line, Hauer (1997)'s Comparison-Group method was chosen as an analysis methodology. The JungBu-2 highway, which is equipped with the white left shoulder line and is in trial operation, was chosen as a target for analysis. Data of accidents for 10 months before and after installation was collected and analyzed. In addition to the number of accidents, the types of accidents were classified into nighttime accidents, accidents in bad weather, and median collisions. The accident reduction effect of improved visibility of lanes was analyzed. RESULTS : The analysis' finding showed that installation of the white left shoulder line decreased the number of accidents by 28%. Moreover, improvement in visibility was effective in reducing nighttime accidents by 67.63%, accidents in bad weather by 55.19%, and median collisions by 48.55%. CONCLUSIONS : Based on the analysis' results in this study, it was concluded that white left shoulder line on the freeway contributed to reduce traffic accidents, especially nighttime accidents, accidents in bad weather, and median collisions.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.28 no.8
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• pp.14-23
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• 2014

According to the analysis of crosswalk pedestrian accidents, accidents that occur at night represent 70% of all deaths among crosswalk pedestrians when compared to accidents occurring in the daytime. This is due to the poor visibility that hinders drivers to recognize pedestrians at night. Illuminance on the horizontal plane of the road and the current state of crosswalk lighting are not sufficient enough to comply with standards. Thus, we analyzed factors derived from lighting environment studies on improving crosswalk visibility, domestic and foreign crosswalk lighting standards, and subsequently proposed solutions which are needed to raise domestic crosswalk lighting standards, and a means to uphold those standards through proper verification.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.347-360
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• 2018

We surveyed 223 road workers between 2017 July-August about wearing and satisfaction in order to find basic data to develop safety clothing that enhances visibility of motion and comfort while meeting international standards. It was found that most of the current warning clothing owned by road cleaners and about 2/3 of policemen clothes were provided by public institutions. The purpose of wearing, color, properties, satisfaction and protectiveness differed significantly by occupation. Second, the most popular response for the type and quantity of warning clothing was 2 sets of spring/autumn, summer, and winter type for road cleaners, whereas policemen chose 2 sets of all types plus a safety vest. Therefore, a top-level (3rd class) warning clothing study is required. Third, satisfaction ranked Moderate>Good>Poor; in addition, the main reason for satisfaction was that 'retroreflective tape increases safety at night (54.4%)' for road cleaners and 'the fluorescent color stands out (43.7%)' for policemen. Thus, it was accepted that visibility contributed to safety. Fourth, body-protectiveness was evaluated higher compared to wearing satisfaction, and it was recognized more by road cleaners than policemen. Overall satisfaction was higher for road cleaners versus policemen both in Seoul than Incheon. Fifth, the main dissatisfaction in both groups was 'low sweat absorbency' showing improving the air permeability, moisture regain and permeability was the highest priority. Finally, those working 8 hours a day tended to evaluate more positively the 6 properties of the material.

• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.665-671
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• 2014

Recent researches show that the traffic fatality rate in fog is higher than that in rain and snow. In that sense, methods to measure visibility accurately and to notify the measured visibility information to drivers are required. We thus developed a system for measuring the road visibility in realtime by employing CCTV cameras. In this paper, we also propose a wide-area visibility information system through measuring the visibility of every highway by using the developed system. The proposed wide-area visibility information system uses the video clips from the CCTV camera instead of the output from the expensive fog sensor. Hence, we expect that it can reduce the cost of installation and operation dramatically and the measured visibility information has a number of applications.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2014.06a
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• pp.185-186
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• 2014

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.48-57
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• 2003

The objective of this study is to review and verify whether the functions and effect of roadside trees generally hewn in theory are actually realized in urban roads and how well they are performed if the function and effect are realized. The study was conducted with a focus on 3 functions and effects including roadside tree's urban landscape improvement function (green area visibility ratio), effect of introducing green area within a city, and urban green network building function. The major study results are as follows: First, the average green area visibility ratio of 41 study areas is currently about 25.90%. The green area visibility ratio of commercial area within downtown was lowest among 5 road types. It showed that it is possible to raise the average green area visibility ratio up to 32.49% through roadside tree management and additional plantation. Second, in a section between Paldal Mountain and Suwon City Hall where there is no forest fragments and parks at all, a green area of 4,826 roadside trees represented 2.4% of total area and served as the only linear green area. Third, an analysis of 15 cities in Kyonggi province showed that urban forests are concentrated in outskirts. The suey showed that because forest fragments and parks exist in a form of points in urban areas, roadside trees are the only green areas that link each other and build a network.

• Atmosphere
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.439-450
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• 2019

Present weather plays an important role not only for atmospheric sciences but also for public welfare and road safety. While the widely used state-of-the-art visibility and present weather sensor yields present weather, a single type of measurement is far from perfect to replace long history of human-eye based observation. Truly automatic present weather observation enables us to increase spatial resolution by an order of magnitude with existing facilities in Korea. 8 years of human-eyed present weather records in 19 sites over Korea are compared with visibility sensors and auxiliary measurements, such as humidity of AWS. As clear condition agrees with high probability, next best categories follow fog, rain, snow, mist, haze and drizzle in comparison with human-eyed observation. Fog, mist and haze are often confused due to nature of machine sensing visibility. Such ambiguous weather conditions are improved with empirically induced criteria in combination with visibility and humidity. Differences between instrument manufacturers are also found indicating nonstandard present weather decision. Analysis shows manufacturer dependent present weather differences are induced by manufacturer's own algorithms, not by visibility measurement. Accuracies of present weather for haze, mist, and fog are all improved by 61.5%, 44.9%, and 26.9% respectively. The result shows that automatic present weather sensing is feasible for operational purpose with minimal human interactions if appropriate algorithm is applied. Further study is ongoing for impact of different sensing types between manufacturers for both visibility and present weather data.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.478-489
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• 2003

The existing researches related to the fog have focused on mainly the fog itself and its spatial variation. This study defined the hazardous fog as the fog with visibility under 500 m which caused the severe dangerous situation on roads and might cause traffic accident due to insufficient visibility. This study aimed to develop the hazardous fog index which quantified the degree of danger and included frequency of fog, visibility and its duration. We applied the index to 3 years weather station data in Korea and the results showed the distribution of the hazardous fog and their priority in terms of safety management. This was the first study that introduced the fog index in Korea and that quantified the degree of hazardous fog. These application results were useful for identifying the dangerous area due to hazardous fog and contributing to ensure the safety of eventual road users and road authorities.