• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.102-106
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• 2008

This study is to evaluated the impact of varying spatial resolutions of DEM (2 m, 10 m, and 30 m), land use (QuickBird, 1/25,000 and Landsat), and soil data (1/25,000 and 1/50,000) on the uncertainty of Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) predicted streamflow, sediment, T-N, and T-P transport in a small agricultural watershed ($1.21\;km^2$). SWAT model was adopted and the model was calibrated for a $255.4\;km^2$ watershed using 30 m DEM, Landsat land use, and 1/25,000 soil data. The model was run with the combination of three DEM, land use, and soil map respectively. The SWAT model was calibrated for 2 years (1999-2000) using daily streamflow and monthly water quality (SS, T-N, T-P) records from 1999 to 2000, and verified for another 2 years (2001-2002). The average Nash and Sutcliffe model efficiency was 0.59 for streamflow and the root mean square error were 2.08, 4.30 and 0.70 tons/yr for sediment, T-N and T-P respectively. The hydrological results showed that output uncertainty was biggest by spatial resolution of land use. Streamflow increase the watershed average CN value of QucikBird land use was 0.4 and 1.8 higher than those of 1/25,000 and Landsat land use caused increase of streamflow.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.33-40
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• 2018

Characteristics of interface friction between cohesionless soils and geotechnical structure surfaces play an important role in the analysis of earth load and resistance on the structure. In general, geotechnical structures are mainly composed of either steel or concrete, and their surface roughnesses with respect to soil particle sizes influence the interface characteristics between soils and the structures. Accurate assessment of the interface friction characteristics between soils and structures is important to ensure the safety of geotechnical structures, such as mechanically stabilized earth walls reinforced with inextensible reinforcements, piles embedded into soils, retaining wall backfilled with soils. In this study, based on the database of high quality interface friction tests between frictional soils and solid surfaces from literature, equation representing peak interface friction angle is proposed. The influential factors of the peak interface friction angle are relative roughness between soil and solid surface, relative density of frictional soil, and residual (constant volume) interface friction angle. Futhermore, for the developed equation of the interface friction angle, its uncertainty was assessed statistically based on Goodness-of-fit test results.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.153-163
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• 2017

The underlying goal of the present paper is to investigate soil and structural uncertainties on impedance functions and structural response of soil-shallow foundation-structure (SSFS) system using Monte Carlo simulations. The impedance functions of a rigid massless circular foundation resting on the surface of a random soil layer underlain by a homogeneous half-space are obtained using 1-D wave propagation in cones with reflection and refraction occurring at the layer-basement interface and free surface. Firstly, two distribution functions (lognormal and gamma) were used to generate random numbers of soil parameters (layer's thickness and shear wave velocity) for both horizontal and rocking modes of vibration with coefficients of variation ranging between 5 and 20%, for each distribution and each parameter. Secondly, the influence of uncertainties of soil parameters (layer's thickness, and shear wave velocity), as well as structural parameters (height of the superstructure, and radius of the foundation) on the response of the coupled system using lognormal distribution was investigated. This study illustrated that uncertainties on soil and structure properties, especially shear wave velocity and thickness of the layer, height of the structure and the foundation radius significantly affect the impedance functions, and in same time the response of the coupled system.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.45 no.9
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• pp.861-874
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• 2012

To fulfill applicability of Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, it is important that this model passes through a careful calibration and uncertainty analysis. In recent years, many researchers have come up with various uncertainty analysis techniques for SWAT model. To determine the differences and similarities of typical techniques, we applied three uncertainty analysis procedures to Chungju Dam watershed (6,581.1 $km^2$) of South Korea included in SWAT-Calibration Uncertainty Program (SWAT-CUP): Sequential Uncertainty FItting algorithm ver.2 (SUFI2), Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation (GLUE), Parameter Solution (ParaSol). As a result, there was no significant difference in the objective function values between SUFI2 and GLUE algorithms. However, ParaSol algorithm shows the worst objective functions, and considerable divergence was also showed in 95PPU bands with each other. The p-factor and r-factor appeared from 0.02 to 0.79 and 0.03 to 0.52 differences in streamflow respectively. In general, the ParaSol algorithm showed the lowest p-factor and r-factor, SUFI2 algorithm was the highest in the p-factor and r-factor. Therefore, in the SWAT model calibration and uncertainty analysis of the automatic methods, we suggest the calibration methods considering p-factor and r-factor. The p-factor means the percentage of observations covered by 95PPU (95 Percent Prediction Uncertainty) band, and r-factor is the average thickness of the 95PPU band.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.11
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• pp.101-111
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• 2006

Slope stability analysis is a geotechnical engineering problem characterized by many sources of uncertainty. Some of them are connected to the variability of soil properties involved in the analysis. In this paper, a numerical procedure of probabilistic analysis of slope stability is presented based on Spencer's method of slices. The deterministic analysis is extended to a probabilistic approach that accounts fur the uncertainties and spatial variation of the soil parameters. The procedure is based on the first-order reliability method to compute the Hasofer-Lind reliability index and Monte-Carlo Simulation. A probabilistic stability assessment was performed to obtain the variation of failure probability with the variation of soil parameters in homogeneous and layered slopes as an example. The examples give insight into the application of uncertainty treatment to the slope stability and show the impact of the spatial variability of soil properties on the outcome of a probabilistic assessment.

• Proceedings of The Korean Society of Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Conference
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• 2019.08a
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• pp.241-242
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• 2019

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.649-654
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• 2005

Shallow slope failures in residual soil during periods of prolonged infiltration are common over the world. One of the key factors that dominate slope stability is hydrological response associated with infiltration. Hence, the soil-water profile during rainfall infiltration into unsaturated soil must me examined to evaluate slope stability. However, the hydraulic response of unsaturated soil is complicated by inherent uncertainties of the soil hydraulic properties. This study presents a methodology for assessing the effects of parameter uncertainty of hydraulic properties on the response of a analytical infiltration model using first-order reliability method. The unsaturated soil properties are considered as uncertain variables with means, standard deviations, and marginal probability distributions. Sensitivities of the probabilistic outcome to the basic uncertainties in the input random variables are provided through importance factors.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.86 no.2
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• pp.249-260
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• 2023

The uncertainties involved in structural performances are of importance when the optimum number and property of seismic retrofit devices are determined. This paper proposes a seismic retrofit design framework for asymmetric soft-first-story buildings, considering uncertainties in the soil condition and seismic retrofit device. The effect of the uncertain parameters on the structural performance is used to find a robust and optimal seismic retrofit solution. The framework finds a robust and optimal seismic retrofit solution by finding the optimal locations and mechanical properties of the seismic retrofit device for different realizations of the uncertain parameters. The structural performance for each realization is computed to evaluate the effect of the uncertainty parameters on the seismic performance. The framework utilizes parallel processing to decrease the computationally intensive nonlinear dynamic analysis time. The framework returns a robust design solution that satisfies the given limit state for every realization of the uncertain parameters. The proposed framework is applied to the seismic retrofit design of a five-story asymmetric soft-first-story case study structure retrofitted with a viscoelastic damper. Robust optimal parameters for retrofitting a structure to satisfy the limit state for the different realizations of the uncertain parameter are found using the proposed framework. According to the performance evaluation results of the retrofitted structure, the developed framework is proved effective in the seismic retrofit of the asymmetric structure with inherent uncertainties.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.51-59
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• 2007

A reliability-based approach that can systematically model various sources of uncertainty is presented in the context of slope stability. Expressions for characterization of soil properties are developed in order to incorporate sampling errors, spatial variability and its effect of spatial averaging. Reliability analyses of slope stability with different statistical representations of soil properties show that the incorporation of sampling error, spatial correlation, and conditional simulation leads to significantly lower probability of failure than that obtained by using simple random variable approach. The results strongly suggest that the spatial variability and sampling error have to be properly incorporated in slope stability analysis.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.19-27
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• 2015

Permissible soil concentrations for explosives (i.e., TNT and RDX) and heavy metals (i.e., Cu, Zn, Pb, and As) heve been derived from human risk and ecotoxicity, respectively. For TNT and RDX, human risk based-permissible soil concentrations were determined as 460 mg-TNT/kg-soil and 260 mg-RDX/kg-soil. Ecotoxicity based-permissible soil concentrations for Cu and Zn were determined from species sensitivity distribution (SSD) and uncertainty factor of 1 to 5, yielding 18.0-40.0 mg-Cu/kg-soil and 46.0-100 mg-Zn/kg-soil. For Pb and As, ecotoxicity data were not enough to establish SSD so that a deterministic method was used, generating 13.8-30.8 mg-Pb/kg-soil and 2.10-4.60 mg-As/kg-soil. It is worth noting that the methodology used to derive permissible concentrations in soil can differ depending on ecotoxicity data availability and socio-economic situations, which results in different permissible concentrations. The permissible concentrations presented in this study have been derived from conservative assumptions for exposure parameters, and thus should be considered as soil standards. In the light of remediation and pollution management of a site of interest, the site-specific and receptor-specific permissible soil concentrations should be derived considering potential receptors, current and future land use, background concentrations, and socio-economic consultation.