• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.83-90
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• 2017

Objectives: The aim of this study was to model the avoidable burden of the risk factors of road traffic crashes in Iran and to prioritize interventions to reduce that burden. Methods: The prevalence and the effect size of the risk factors were obtained from data documented by the traffic police of Iran in 2013. The effect size was estimated using an ordinal regression model. The potential impact fraction index was applied to calculate the avoidable burden in order to prioritize interventions. This index was calculated for theoretical, plausible, and feasible minimum risk level scenarios. The joint effects of the risk factors were then estimated for all the scenarios. Results: The highest avoidable burdens in the theoretical, plausible, and feasible minimum risk level scenarios for the non-use of child restraints on urban roads were 52.25, 28.63, and 46.67, respectively. In contrast, the value of this index for speeding was 76.24, 37.00, and 62.23, respectively, for rural roads. Conclusions: On the basis of the different scenarios considered in this research, we suggest focusing on future interventions to decrease the prevalence of speeding, the non-use of child restraints, the use of cell phones while driving, and helmet disuse, and the laws related to these items should be considered seriously.

• Journal of Korean Society of Transportation
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.17-28
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• 2008

Favorable policies for freight vehicles (i.e., trucks), such as exclusive "Truck-ways," have been proposed, and at the same time restricted policies for freight vehicles have been suggested because transportation of goods by truck aggravates traffic congestion and environmental conditions in urban areas. This study discusses the limitations of assessment processes for freight vehicle route management systems which have been carried out from limited perspectives such as physical distribution efficiency and traffic circulation. The objective of this study is to propose an assessment method of truck route management systems in urban areas which includes more varied criteria. This research modified the two existing assessment indices of physical distribution efficiency and traffic circulation. In addition two new assessment indexes are proposed: (i) exposure indices for population directly influenced by nitrous oxide, a representative pollutant, and (ii) a friction index between trips for attending elementary school and freight vehicle trips. It was found that from the perspective of physical distribution efficiency and traffic circulation, the "before" alternative is better than "after". However, from the aspect of traffic safety and environmental impacts the "after" alternative is better than "before". It is expected that the proposed evaluation method in this study would be useful when identifying reasonable policies for truck route management in urban areas.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.220-225
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• 2017

Background: Benzene is a known occupational and environmental pollutant. Its urinary metabolite trans, trans-muconic acid (tt-MA) has been introduced by some environmental and occupational health regulatory associations as a biological index for the assessment of benzene exposure; however, recently, doubts have been raised about the specificity of tt-MA for low-level benzene exposures. In the present study, we investigated the association between urinary levels of tt-MA and inhalational exposure to benzene in different exposure groups. Methods: Benzene exposure was assessed by personal air sampling. Collected benzene on charcoal tube was extracted by carbon disulfide and determined by a gas chromatograph (gas chromatography with a flame ionization detector). Urinary tt-MA was extracted by a strong anion-exchange column and determined with high-performance liquid chromatography-UV. Results: Urinary levels of tt-MA in intensive benzene exposure groups (chemical workers and police officers) were significantly higher than other groups (urban and rural residents), but its levels in the last two groups with significant different exposure levels (mean = 0.081 ppm and 0.019 ppm, respectively) showed no significant difference (mean = $388{\mu}g/g$ creatinine and $282{\mu}g/g$, respectively; p < 0.05). Before work shift, urine samples of workers and police officers showed a high amount of tt-MA and its levels in rural residents' samples were not zero. Conclusion: Our results suggest that tt-MA may not be a reliable biomarker for monitoring low-level (below 0.5 ppm) benzene exposures.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.111-118
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• 2010

Reinforced steel corrosion due to concrete carbonation is one of main factors on the durability of RC structure. The carbonation velocity have an effect on carbon dioxide density, concrete quality and structural shape. Specially, these problems have increased in urban area. This study investigates the carbonation status of the bridges and quantifies the effect of carbonation based on various domestic field data. The failure probability of durability is evaluated on the basis of reliability concept. According to experimental results of the carbonation depth, the carbonation depth increased with structural age and carbonation velocity decreased with high strength of concrete. In most cases, the failure probability of durability by carbonation was more than 10%. Also, The results requires the minimum cover thickness of 70-80mm for target safety index(${\beta}$=1.3) proposed by Korean concrete specification.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2021.10a
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• pp.161-163
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• 2021

This urban centralization is expected to develop rapidly, with 75% of the population living in the city by 2035. Large cities are becoming unsustainable due to side effects such as environmental pollution, severe traffic jams, excessive energy depletion, and destruction of the natural ecosystem. In addition, the happiness index of citizens of large cities is also falling because of high crime rates and safety accidents, the work-life imbalance caused by inequality and polarization, and overly competitive education. To solve this problem, Smart City, an IT-based future city model, was born. The Korean government is also actively attempting to improve urban competitiveness and promote sustainable development through efficient construction and operation of smart cities as a national focus project. To support the effort, we review the basic directions and strategies of Sejong City's Smart City service infrastructure based on the comprehensive national land plan, Smart City plan, and Smart City strategy plan.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.729-740
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• 2022

This study analyzed the effects of job stress and sleep disorders on sleepiness during the daytime for a night-shift urban railway crew. As a result of the analysis, measurements on a daytime sleepiness index were higher for the crew than those during other working hours, indicating that the degrees of sleepiness and drowsiness were severe. Afterwards, aromatic essential oils, which are generally known to help relieve sleep disorders and stress, were utilized to verify the effect on stress on night-shift workers. The experimental group treated with aromatherapy was found to show improved stress reduction and overall activity levels in the autonomic nervous system compared to an untreated control group. This study proves that night work by an urban railway crew negatively affects stress levels by increasing stress and negatively affects the autonomous nervous system, also showing that an aromatherapy treatment can be a good alternative to alleviate these conditions. The results of this study are expected to help prevent safety accidents by relieving the stress of nighttime workers.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.19-28
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• 2013

Purpose: The purpose of this study to assess long-term care facilities in Seoul and certificate Seoul-type elderly care facilities. After certification, Seoul city can provide certificated facilities with budget and support to improve service quality. Methods: Questionnaires to elderly care facilities experts and field surveys to facilities in Seoul have been conducted for the data collection. Results: The result of this study can be summarized into three points. The first one is that a direction of operation for Seoul-type elderly care facilities is to improve manpower and provide special program for enforcing quality assurance. The second one is that this study provide index of evaluation for Seoul-type elderly care facilities. The indexes include management, facility environment and safety, service delivery process, and service results. The third one is that management plan for this policy should be carried out. The management plan include demonstration project, opinion research. Implications: Seoul-type elderly care facilities can have positive effects on quality of service. For the introduction of this policy, Seoul city and autonomous Gu have to make careful preparations for this policy.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.17-22
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• 2019

In recent years, crime has been steadily increasing, causing not only economic damage but also aggravating the social atmosphere. The CPTED(Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) guideline, which is an environmental crime prevention design technique, reduces the possibility of crime by implementing a proper defensive design plan through appropriate lighting design in the city and reduces the fear of crime. Among the various principles of CPTED, the proper use of street lamps and CCTV is considered to be an important factor in enabling natural surveillance. In this study, the authors identified and quantified the current status of the installation of street lamps and CCTV in each autonomous district of Seoul. The physical quantity of lighting and social factor quantified from light lamps and CCTV data, respectively, were expected to support the guidelines presented by CPTED. Therefore, we conducted statistical analysis based on quantified values and found that street lamps and CCTV had a statistically significant relationship with crime rate. In addition, the correlation between the safety index and the crime rate, calculated by dividing the number of street lamps and CCTVs by area, was also analyzed and an R2 value of 0.647 was confirmed.

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.224-239
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• 2023

C-ITS (Cooperative-Intelligent Transportation System) refers to user safety-oriented technology and systems that provide forward traffic situation information based on a two-way wireless communication technology between vehicles or between vehicles and infrastructure. Since the Daejeon-Sejong pilot project in 2016, the C-ITS infrastructure has been installed at various locations to provide C-ITS safety services through highway and local government demonstration projects. In this study, a methodology was developed to verify the effectiveness of the warning information using individual vehicle data collected through the Gwangju Metropolitan City C-ITS demonstration project. The analysis of the effectiveness was largely divided into driving behavior impact analysis and environmental analysis. Compliance analysis and driving safety evaluation were performed for the driving impact analysis. In addition, to supplement the inadequate collection of Probe Vehicle Data (PVD) collected during the C-ITS demonstration project, Digital Tacho Graph ( DTG ) data was additionally collected and used for effect analysis. The results of the compliance analysis showed that drivers displayed reduced driving behavior in response to warning information based on a sufficient number of valid samples. Also, the results of calculating and analyzing driving safety indicators, such as jerk and acceleration noise, revealed that driving safety was improved due to the provision of warning information.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.719-741
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• 2014

Monitoring surface cracks is important to ensure the health of concrete structures. However, traditional visual inspection to monitor the concrete cracks has disadvantages such as subjective inspection nature, associated time and cost, and possible danger to inspectors. To alter the visual inspection, a complete procedure for automated crack assessment based on adaptive digital image processing has been proposed in this study. Crack objects are extracted from the images using the subtraction with median filter and the local binarization using the Niblack's method. To adaptively. determine the optimal window sizes for the median filter and the Niblack's method without distortion of crack object an optimal filter size index (OFSI) is proposed. From the extracted crack objects using the optimal size of window, the crack objects are decomposed to the crack skeletons and edges, and the crack width is calculated using 4-connected normal line according to the orientation of the local skeleton line. For an image, a crack width nephogram is obtained to have an intuitive view of the crack distribution. The proposed procedure is verified from a test on a concrete reaction wall with various types of cracks. From the crack images with different crack widths and patterns, the widths of cracks in the order of submillimeters are calculated with high accuracy.