• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.317-323
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• 2002

This paper proposed the calculation method of the generation operating avoided cost to cost-effectiveness evaluation of energy conservation programs that compounded the Proxy Plant Method and Load Decrement Method. This method introduced an operating index of the Energy Efficiency Demand-Side Management (EEDSM) resources based on the end-user's behaviors on the electricity power usage. The operation index is applied to calculate the hourly operating capacity of diffused high-efficiency appliances. And the operating capacity on the peak load hours for reference load is computed through the reduction of the peak load that contributes to that hour. Also, the proposed method evaluated the effect of EEDSM resources. The IEEE-RTS is adopted as a sample system to analyze impacts of an EEDSM. This paper, we have analyzed the effect of EEDSM upon the changes in the generation of generator, generation cost and the system marginal price (SMP). This method can be used to evaluate the impact of the diffused DSM resource and to estimate the impact in short-term EEDSM program. Further, result of the calculation can be utilized to pabulum for effect analysis of EEDSM resources.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2008

How health care providers compete and how competition among them affects their behavior are crucial questions in theory and health policy. In ordinary markets, competition improves social welfare, However in health care markets facing uncertainty and information asymmetry, competition can take the form of wasteful quality competition and result in cost increase. The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of hospital service markets and examine the impact of hospital competition on hospital behavior, more specifically hospital cost and the size of personnel. Based on patient discharge data of 2002 by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs, and health insurance EDI claims data of 2002, this study measures the degree of competition in the inpatient service market of hospitals, using variable radius method and Herfindahl index. The result of the study shows that the hospital service market consists of on average 3.13 government administrative units(shi, gun, or gu). Compared with hospitals, general or general specialized hospitals cover larger markets and operate in more competitive markets. Nearly 60% of patients use hospitals, which are not located in their government administrative units, meaning that market definition based on variable radius is better than the conventional method of market definition based on government administrative units. The results of multivariate analysis show that competition is not associated with high cost index of hospitals. But hospitals in more competitive markets employ larger(more intensive) input of personnel per 100 beds, implying that hospital competition in Korea can have the form of quality and cost-increasing competition.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.3383-3389
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• 2014

Background: Prostate cancer is rapidly increasing in Korea and professional societies have requested adding prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing to the National Cancer Screening Program (NCSP), but this started a controversy in Korea and neutral evidence on this issue is required more than ever. The purpose of this study was to provide economic evidence to the decision makers of the NCSP. Materials and Methods: A cost-utility analysis was performed on the adoption of PSA screening program among men aged 50-74-years in Korea from the healthcare system perspective. Several data sources were used for the cost-utility analysis, including general health screening data, the Korea Central Cancer Registry, national insurance claims data, and cause of mortality from the National Statistical Office. To solicit the utility index of prostate cancer, a face-to-face interview for typical men aged 40 to 69 was conducted using a Time-Trade Off method. Results: As a result, the increase of effectiveness was estimated to be very low, when adopting PSA screening, and the incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) was analyzed as about 94 million KRW. Sensitivity analyses were performed on the incidence rate, screening rate, cancer stage distribution, utility index, and treatment costs but the results were consistent with the base analysis. Conclusions: Under Korean circumstances with a relatively low incidence rate of prostate cancer, PSA screening is not cost-effective. Therefore, we conclude that adopting national prostate cancer screening would not be beneficial until further evidence is provided in the future.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.55 no.spc1
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• pp.1271-1282
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• 2022

The optimal design of Water Distribution System (WDS) is used in various ways according to the purpose set by the user. The optimal design of WDS has various purposes, such as minimizing costs and minimizing energy generated when manufacturing pipes. In this study, based on the Modified Hybrid Vision Correction Algorithm (MHVCA), a cost-optimal design was conducted for various WDSs. We also propose a new evaluation index, Best Rate (BR). BR is an evaluation index developed based on the K-mean Clustering Algorithm. Through BR, a comparison was made on the possibility of searching for the optimal design of each algorithm used in the optimal design of WDS. The results of MHVCA for WDS were compared with Vision Correction Algorithm (VCA) and Hybrid Vision Correction Algorithm (HVCA). MHVCA showed a lower cost design than VCA and HVCA. In addition, MHVCA showed better probability of lower cost designs than VCA and HVCA. MHVCA will be able to show good results when applied to the optimal design of WDS for various purposes as well as the optimal design of WDS for cost minimization applied in this study.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.1132-1140
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• 2007

As it recently appears that Life Cycle Cost Analysis may be considered as new methodology for economic valuation of infrastructure many researches have been made to assess LCC(Life Cycle Cost) of each facility based on a reasonable methods. In general, LCC is composed of construction cost and expected maintenance repair cost. And especially, maintenance repair cost must be estimated to enhance the reliability through systematic and reasonable methods. However in Korea, because high speed railway steel bridges are recently constructed no direct statistical data are available for the account of the maintenance cost and then their maintenance characteristics are not linear yet. Therefore, the approach proposed in the paper utilizes a theoretical determination and degradation of the corrosion and fatigue of the bridges based on Rahgozar et al.(2006)'s model on fatigue notch factor considering into the corrosion to incorporate the corrosion effect into the fatigue strength reduction model. And then, the corresponding probability of failure is calculated in terms of the reliability index using S-N curve to formulate the fatigue limit state. Therefore, this paper proposes the minimum Life Cycle Cost through optimum maintenance plan analysis of high-speed railway steel bridges under construction. Finally, this paper reviews the proposed model in oder to confirm the applicability and feasibility by appling it to high speed railway steel bridges under construction

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.68-76
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to computerize street tree management using a CAD program in order to manage the drawing record of street trees systematically and concurrently. The configuration of this program is composed of Reference Data, Data Inquiry, and Cost Assessment. The Reference Data includes characteristics of trees, monthly managements records, damage by blight and insects and usage of pesticides. The Data Inquiry includes an individual search of the tree index, simple searches and multiple searches. The Cost Assessment includes two main components, the data input with labor cost, manure ocst and pesticide cost and the assesment of management cost for prevention of blight and insects, pruning and fertilization. The results of this study are as follows: 1) When there are practices such as transplanting and removing of street trees it is immediately updated with the various situation. By creating an in progress a tree management system, up to the date information can be given to the manager for decision making. 2) To identify individual tree at the site or in drawing, the street name and numbers were used instead of coordinates. Tree tags are attached to the street trees individually. It can make DB management simple and easy. 3) By doing simple or multiple search with constructed DB, data can be provided quickly. 4) The result of this type of search are useful in the assessment of management cost very useful in regards to items such as the pruning, pesticides scattering and fertilization. 5) By using the AutoCAD software and existing PC without purchasing new equipment, the cost of system implementation can be minimized.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.4 no.4 s.16
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• pp.212-219
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• 2003

In construction project planning and control, a cost model performs a critical role such as cost determination on a contract stage and cost tracing. The model can maximize owner's profit and value within the project budget and optimize cost management works on overall construction implementation stages. A BoQ(Bill of Quantities) generally adopted in a unit price contract has been applied as an important tool for cost control and forecast. However a previous cost model based on the BoQ has shown limitations in that it requires too detailed information and heavy manpower on cost management and difficulty in keeping relationship with construction planning, scheduling and progress management. The each cost items and unit prices which constitute of construction works are individually very important management factors but the relative weight for each items and prices have a difference on the contents and conditions of each conditions of each construction works. In consideration of this structural mechanism of cost determination, this research is aimed at examining the critical factors affecting the construction cost determination and propose and verify a new cost forecasting model which is more simple and efficient and also keeps the accuracy of cost management.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.55-59
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• 2010

High VOC(Vehicle Operating Cost) is the main reason for the rehabilitation of paved road and VOC is composed of fuel consumption, lubricant oil consumption, parts consumption, etc. Fuel consumption is one of the largest components of VOC and the roughness of road represents the deterioration level of the road. For these reasons, the fuel consumption is measured for different IRI(International Roughness Index) in this study. The fuel consumption was measured by processing the voltage signal of fuel injector of vehicle and the speed was measured with GPS. The change rate of fuel consumption for different IRI can be calculated with the results of this test. It's concluded that fuel consumption(L/100km) of medium and large passenger car increases 7 times fast of the increase of IRI(m/km) around 3.5m/km in the speed range of 40 ~ 100km/h, and fuel consumption is the best at 60km/h.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.33-47
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• 2004

Even though the price of extracted but unprocessed coal has been available in Korea, the use of it as scarcity index would be inappropriate because of price subsidy. Following Halvorsen and Smith(1984), Kim and Lee(2002) derived estimates of the shadow price of unextracted coal by estimating the restricted cost function and differentiating with respect to the quantity of coal extracted. In Korea, however, due to the limited data the capital prices have been computed inconsistently case by case without relying on the robust formula like the Christensen-Jorgenson methodology used in US, which could result in biased estimators of the restricted cost function. In the paper the shadow prices of the resources in situ are obtained by measuring an input distance function defined by Shephard (1970), which requires only the data on the quantities of inputs and output. Empirical results for the Korean coal mining industry show that these shadow prices as a coal scarcity have increased fast by approximately three times in comparisons with those obtained by Kim and Lee.

• Journal of Power Electronics
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.222-231
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• 2017

In this paper, a new architecture for a cost-effective power conditioning systems (PCS) using a single-sourced asymmetric cascaded H-bridge multilevel inverter (MLI) for photovoltaic (PV) applications is proposed. The asymmetric MLI topology has a reduced number of parts compared to the symmetrical type for the same number of voltage level. However, the modulation index threshold related to the drop in the number of levels of the inverter output is higher than that of the symmetrical MLI. This problem results in a modulation index limitation which is relatively higher than that of the symmetrical MLI. Hence, an extra voltage pre-regulator becomes a necessary component in the PCS under a wide operating bias variation. In addition to pre-stage voltage regulation for the constant MLI dc-links, another auxiliary pre-regulator should provide isolation and voltage balance among the multiple H-bridge cells in the asymmetrical MLI as well as the symmetrical ones. The proposed PCS uses a single-ended DC-DC converter topology with a coupled inductor and charge-pump circuit to satisfy all of the aforementioned requirements. Since the proposed integrated-type voltage pre-regulator circuit uses only a single MOSFET switch and a single magnetic component, the size and cost of the PCS is an optimal trade-off. In addition, the voltage balance between the separate H-bridge cells is automatically maintained by the number of turns in the coupled inductor transformer regardless of the duty cycle, which eliminates the need for an extra voltage regulator for the auxiliary H-bridge in MLIs. The voltage balance is also maintained under the discontinuous conduction mode (DCM). Thus, the PCS is also operational during light load conditions. The proposed architecture can apply the module-integrated converter (MIC) concept to perform distributed MPPT. The proposed architecture is analyzed and verified for a 7-level asymmetric MLI, using simulation results and a hardware implementation.