• Health Policy and Management
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.141-168
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• 2001

Healthcare service organizations can apply the cost of quality(COQ) model as a method to evaluate a service quality improvement project such as Total Quality Management (TQM). COQ model has been used to quantify and evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of TQM project through estimation between cost and benefit in intervention for a quality Improvement to provide satisfied services for a customer, and to identify a non value added process. For estimating cost of quality, We used activities and activity costs based on Activity Based Costing(ABC) system. These procedures let the researchers know whether the process is value-added by each activity, and identify a process to require improvement in TQM project. Through the series of procedures, health care organizations are service organizations can identify a problem in their quality improvement programs, solve the problem, and improve their quality of care for their costumers with optimized cost. The study subject was a quality improvement program of the department of radiology department in a hospital with n bed sizes in Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The principal source of data for developing the COQ model was total cases of retaking shots for diagnoses during five months period from December of the 1998 to April of the 1999 in the department. First of the procedures, for estimating activity based cost of the department of diagnostic radiology, the researchers analyzed total department health insurance claims to identify activities and activity costs using one year period health insurance claims from September of the 1998 to August of the 1999. COQ model in this study applied Simpson & Multher's COQ(SM's COQ) model, and SM's COQ model divided cost of quality into failure cost with external and internal failure cost, and evaluation/prevention cost. The researchers identified contents for cost of quality, defined activities and activity costs for each content with the SM's COQ model, and finally made the formula for estimating activity costs relating to implementing service quality improvement program. The results from the formula for estimating cost of quality were following: 1. The reasons for retaking shots were largely classified into technique, appliances, patients, quality management, non-appliances, doctors, and unclassified. These classifications by reasons were allocated into each office doing re-taking shots. Therefore, total retaking shots categorized by reasons and offices, the researchers identified internal and external failure costs based on these categories. 2. The researchers have developed cost of quality (COQ) model, identified activities by content for cost of quality, assessed activity driving factors and activity contribution rate, and calculated total cost by each content for cost for quality, except for activity cost. 3. According to estimation of cost of quality for retaking shots in department of diagnostic radiology, the failure cost was ￦35,880, evaluation/preventive cost was ￦72,521, two times as much as failure cost. The proportion between internal failure cost and external failure cost in failure cost is similar. The study cannot identify trends on input cost and quality improving in cost of qualify over the time, because the study employs cross-sectional design. Even with this limitation, results of this study are much meaningful. This study shows possibility to evaluate value on the process of TQM subjects using activities and activity costs by ABC system, and this study can objectively evaluate quality improvement program through quantitative comparing input costs with marginal benefits in quality improvement.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.17-24
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• 2023

A post-processing technique for the measurement signal of a solenoid-type sensor is introduced. The solenoid-type sensor nondestructively evaluates an external tendon of prestressed concrete using the total flux leakage (TFL) method. The TFL solenoid sensor consists of primary and secondary coils. AC electricity, with the shape of a sinusoidal function, is input in the primary coil. The signal proportional to the differential of the input is induced in the secondary coil. Because the amplitude of the induced signal is proportional to the cross-sectional area of the tendon, sectional loss of the tendon caused by ruptures or corrosion can be identified by the induced signal. Therefore, it is important to extract amplitude information from the measurement signal of the TFL sensor. Previously, the amplitude was extracted using local maxima, which is the simplest way to obtain amplitude information. However, because the sampling rate is dramatically decreased by amplitude extraction using the local maxima, the previous method places many restrictions on the direction of TFL sensor development, such as applying additional signal processing and/or artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the proposed method uses amplitude demodulation to obtain the signal amplitude from the TFL sensor, and the sampling rate of the amplitude information is same to the raw TFL sensor data. The proposed method using amplitude demodulation provides ample freedom for development by eliminating restrictions on the first coil input frequency of the TFL sensor and the speed of applying the sensor to external tension. It also maintains a high measurement sampling rate, providing advantages for utilizing additional signal processing or artificial intelligence. The proposed method was validated through experiments, and the advantages were verified through comparison with the previous method. For example, in this study the amplitudes extracted by amplitude demodulation provided a sampling rate 100 times greater than those of the previous method. There may be differences depending on the given situation and specific equipment settings; however, in most cases, extracting amplitude information using amplitude demodulation yields more satisfactory results than previous methods.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.552-558
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• 2002

Recently, based on the human speech recognition (HSR) model of Fletcher, the multi-band speech recognition has been intensively studied by many researchers. As a new automatic speech recognition (ASR) technique, the multi-band speech recognition splits the frequency domain into several sub-bands and recognizes each sub-band independently. The likelihood scores of sub-bands are weighted according to reliabilities of sub-bands and re-combined to make a final decision. This approach is known to be robust under noisy environments. When the noise is stationary a sub-band SNR can be estimated using the noise information in non-speech interval. However, if the noise is non-stationary it is not feasible to obtain the sub-band SNR. This paper proposes the inverse sub-band distance (ISD) weighting, where a distance of each sub-band is calculated by a stochastic matching of input feature vectors and hidden Markov models. The inverse distance is used as a sub-band weight. Experiments on 1500∼1800㎐ band-limited white noise and classical guitar sound revealed that the proposed method could represent the sub-band reliability effectively and improve the performance under both stationary and non-stationary band-limited noise environments.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.59-69
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• 2018

In this paper, we present a robust beamforming design to tackle the weighted sum-rate maximization (WSRM) problem in a multicell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) - non-orthogonal multipleaccess (NOMA) downlink system for 5G wireless communications. This work consider the imperfectchannel state information (CSI) at the base station (BS) by adding uncertainties to channel estimation matrices as the worst-case model i.e., singular value uncertainty model (SVUM). With this observation, the WSRM problem is formulated subject to the transmit power constraints at the BS. The objective problem is known as on-deterministic polynomial (NP) problem which is difficult to solve. We propose an robust beam forming design which establishes on majorization minimization (MM) technique to find the optimal transmit beam forming matrix, as well as efficiently solve the objective problem. In addition, we also propose a joint user clustering and power allocation (JUCPA) algorithm in which the best user pair is selected as a cluster to attain a higher sum-rate. Extensive numerical results are provided to show that the proposed robust beamforming design together with the proposed JUCPA algorithm significantly increases the performance in term of sum-rate as compared with the existing NOMA schemes and the conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) scheme.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.8 no.3 s.29
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• pp.63-76
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• 2006

For a private toll road project, deciding optimal toll is an important element of economic analysis for the project and a challengeable work. In this study, the optimal toll of a private toll bridge, Geoga Bridge which connects Geoje Island of Gyeongnam Province and Gaduk Island of Busan was estimated using Stated Preference (SP) data. The SP data were collected by interviewing the passenger car drivers travelling on the National Road 14. They are latent users of the bridge. A fuzzy approximate reasoning model to estimate the optimal toll was built using the SP data. For the input variable of the model, the saved travel time and toll level were employed and the diversion rate to the bridge was employed for the output variable. The diversion rates for each toll level and saved travel time were estimated and the toll level which had maximized the toll revenue was decided as optimal toll. The optimal toll was tested by comparing with the average pay rate of passenger car drivers. Since the optimal toll for passenger cars at one hour saving, the 6,250 won is about 50 % of the average pay rate of passenger car divers, the toll was evaluated not to be high. The technique employed in this study may be used for the estimation of the optimal tolls for other kinds of vehicles.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.23 no.11
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• pp.1264-1271
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• 2012

Fast tracking is important for high-speed data transmission in high-speed mobile environment such as high speed rail and vehicular. Digital retrodirective array antenna is possible to do automatically beam tracking because it can control the phase information of the output signal toward opposite direction to input signal without no a priori knowledge of the arrival direction. Also, Digital retrodirective array antennas has merit that it is easy to upgrade and modify compare with analogue retrodirective array antennas. In this paper, we analyze the BER performance of digital retrodirective array antenna under AWGN environment and multipath signal. Simulation results show correct phase estimation and conjugation of retrodirective array antenna by using phase detector block. Also, phase conjugation technique has better BER performance about 1 dB at source than that of without phase conjugation when phase lag is $15^{\circ}$ in AWGN environment. This paper also discusses effect of the presence of multipath signal. Phase and amplitude error about direction of direct signal occurs when retrodirective array system is affected by interference and multipath signal in the presence of multipath signal.

• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.5-20
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• 1992

The physical-based and lumped-parameter hydrologic groundwater flow model for predicting the rainfall-triggered rise of groundwater levels in hillside slopes is developed in this paper to assess the risk of landslides. The developed model consists of a vertical infiltration model for unsaturated zone linked to a linear storage reservoir model(LSRM) for saturated zone. The groundwater flow model has uncertain constants like soil depttL slope angle, saturated permeability, and potential evapotranspiration and four free model parameters like a, b, c, and K. The free model parameters could be estimated from known input-output records. The BARD algorithm is uses as the parameter estimation technique which is based on a linearization of the proposed model by Gauss -Newton method and Taylor series expansion. The application to examine the capacity of prediction shows that the developed model has a potential of use in forecast systems of predicting landslides and that the optimal estimate of potential 'a' in infiltration model is the most important in the global optimum analysis because small variation of it results in the large change of the objective function, the sum of squares of deviations of the observed and computed groundwater levels. 본 논문에서는 가파른 산사면에서 산사태의 발생을 예측하기 위한 수문학적 인 지하수 흐름 모델을 개발하였다. 이 모델은 물리적인 개념에 기본하였으며, Lumped-parameter를 이용하였다. 개발된 지하수 흐름 모델은 두 모델을 조합하여 구성되어 있으며, 비포화대 흐름을 위해서는 수정된 abcd 모델을, 포화대 흐름에 대해서는 시간 지체 효과를 고려할 수 있는 선형 저수지 모델을 이용하였다. 지하수 흐름 모델은 토층의 두께, 산사면의 경사각, 포화투수계수, 잠재 증발산 량과 같은 불확실한 상수들과 a, b, c, 그리고 K와 같은 자유모델변수들을 가진다. 자유모델변수들은 유입-유출 자료들로부터 평가할 수 있으며, 이를 위해서 본 논문에서는 Gauss-Newton 방법을 이용한 Bard 알고리즘을 사용하였다. 서울 구로구 시흥동 산사태 발생 지역의 산사면에 대하여 개발된 모델을 적용하여 예제 해석을 수행함으로써, 지하수 흐름 모델이 산사태 발생 예측을 위하여 이용할 수 있음을 입증하였다. 또한, 매개변수분석 연구를 통하여, 변수 a값은 작은 변화에 대하여 목적함수값에 큰 변화를 일으키므로 a의 값에 대한 최적값을 구하는 것이 가장 중요한 요소라는 결론을 얻었다.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.209-221
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• 2015

Temperature is one of the most important factors affecting crop growth. The diurnal cycle of the scale factor [Tsc] for air temperature and the surface temperature of crop leaf and soil could be estimated by the following equation : $[Tsc]=0.5{\times}sin(X+C)+0.5$. The daily air temperature (E[Ti]) according to the E&E time [X] can be estimated by following equation using average (Tavg), maximum (Tm) and minimum (Tn) temperature : $E[Ti]=Tn+(Tm-Tn){\times}[0.5{\times}sin\;\{X+(9.646Tavg+703.65)\}+0.5]$. The crop leaf temperature in 24th June 2014 was high as the order of red pepper without mulching > red pepper with mulching > soybean under drought > soybean with irrigation > Chinese cabbage. The case in estimating crop leaf surface temperature using air temperature and soil surface temperature was lower in the deviation compared to the case using air temperature for Chinese cabbage and red pepper. These results can be utilized for the crop models as input data with estimation.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.74-99
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• 2022

Surface ozone is produced by photochemical reactions of nitrogen oxides(NOx) and volatile organic compounds(VOCs) emitted from vehicles and industrial sites, adversely affecting vegetation and the human body. In South Korea, ozone is monitored in real-time at stations(i.e., point measurements), but it is difficult to monitor and analyze its continuous spatial distribution. In this study, surface ozone concentrations were interpolated to have a spatial resolution of 1.5km every hour using the stacking ensemble technique, followed by a 5-fold cross-validation. Base models for the stacking ensemble were cokriging, multi-linear regression(MLR), random forest(RF), and support vector regression(SVR), while MLR was used as the meta model, having all base model results as additional input variables. The results showed that the stacking ensemble model yielded the better performance than the individual base models, resulting in an averaged R of 0.76 and RMSE of 0.0065ppm during the study period of 2020. The surface ozone concentration distribution generated by the stacking ensemble model had a wider range with a spatial pattern similar with terrain and urbanization variables, compared to those by the base models. Not only should the proposed model be capable of producing the hourly spatial distribution of ozone, but it should also be highly applicable for calculating the daily maximum 8-hour ozone concentrations.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.775-784
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• 2023

In terms of flood management, it is necessary to analyze quantitative rainfall and runoff from a spatial and temporal perspective and to analyze runoff for heavy rainfall events that are concentrated within a short period of time. The simulation and analysis results of rainfall-runoff models vary depending on the type and input data. In particular, rainfall data is an important factor, so calculating areal mean rainfall is very important. In this study, the areal mean rainfall of the Samcheok Osipcheon(Riv.) watersheds located in the mountainous terrain was calculated using the Arithmetic Mean Method, Thiessen's Weighting Method, and the Isohyetal Method, and the rainfall-runoff results were compared by applying the distributional model S-RAT and the lumped model HEC-HMS. The results of the temporal transferability study showed that the combination of the distributional model and the Isohyetal Method had the best statistical performance with MAE of 64.62 m³/s, RMSE of 82.47 m³/s, and R² and NSE of 0.9383 and 0.8547, respectively. It is considered that this study was properly analyzed because the peak flood volume occurrence time of the observed and simulated flows is within 1 hour. Therefore, the results of this study can be used for frequency analysis in the future, which can be used to improve the accuracy of simulating peak flood volume and peak flood occurrence time in mountainous watersheds with steep slopes.