• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.79-94
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• 2017

Objectives : The elderly in South Korea are the poorest among OECD countries in 2015. The aim of this study was to explore the health and life of the low-income elderly living in vulnerable areas in a metropolitan city. Methods : Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews with 7 participants from October to November 2015 and analyzed through Colaizzi's phenomenological methodology. The participants were interviewed for over 60 minutes in each person. Results : 7 categories were identified from 17 subcategories: "My life history: sick body," "Living with a sick body," "My poor but precious life," "A sense of distance from the hospital," "Narrowed area of my life," "Thankful for help," and "The village where I have lived my destiny." There is a lack of medical accessibility, mobility, and economic independence for low-income seniors. In addition, full-fledged redevelopment comes to them as violence. Conclusions : The health and life of the low-income elderly in vulnerable areas are products of many social factors, reaffirming the importance of social health.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.3-15
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• 2008

North Korea is one of the most vulnerable countries of the world for drought but still it is difficult to find scientific researches for understanding of the drought characteristics. This study analyzed the temporal and spatial distribution of meterological drought severity and classified the drought development types in North Korea. All eleven drought indices were tested such as seasonal rainfall, PDS, SPI and so on, and then drew the drought risk map by each indicator using frequency analysis and GIS(Geographic Information Systems) for twenty one meteorological stations. In addition meteorological drought characteristics in North Korea was classified to six patterns on Si/Gun administrative units using cluster analysis on the drought indicators. The cluster III has the strongly drought-resistant area due to sufficient rainfall and the cluster V was considered as the most drought-vulnerable area, Pungsan and Sinpo, because of the severest drought condition for eight drought indicators. The results of this study are expected to be provided for the basic understanding of regionalized drought severity and characteristics confronting the risk of drought from climate variations in North Korea.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2012

The spatial variation of ground motion in Kolkata Metropolitan District (KMD) has been estimated by generating synthetic ground motion considering the point source model coupled with site response analysis. The most vulnerable source was identified from regional seismotectonic map for an area of about 350 km radius around Kolkata. The rock level acceleration time histories at 121 borehole locations in Kolkata for the vulnerable source, Eocene Hinge Zone, due to maximum credible earthquake (MCE) moment magnitude 6.2 were generated by synthetic ground motion model. Soil investigation data of 121 boreholes were collected from the report of Soil Data Bank Project, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Surface level ground motion parameters were determined using SHAKE2000 software. The results are presented in the form of peak ground acceleration (PGA) at rock level and ground surface, amplification factor, and the response spectra at the ground surface for frequency 1.5 Hz, 3 Hz, 5 Hz and 10 Hz and 5% damping ratio. Site response study shows higher PGA in comparison with rock level acceleration. Maximum amplification in some portion in KMD area is found to be as high as 3.0 times compared to rock level.

• 한국방재학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.02a
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• pp.636-639
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• 2007

The frequently flooded area has been known as very vulnerable area. This area has nature disasters such as typhoon, storm and flood almost every year. The purpose of this study is to develop a management system for frequently flooded area by Web based. So this system is possible to disaster management which irrespective of time and place. Through this system, general user can easily retrieve status information and obtain that in visual way such as maps. graph, and texts if they have only certain web browsers.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.251-252
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• 2013

Most of the Historic Preservation Areas are very vulnerable to disasters. The aim of this study is to build probability of street blockade for evacuation routes planning from each house to an evacuation place at a large-scale disaster in such a historic preservation area. The study area is Hamanaka Machi Happongi Shuku in Kashima city, Saga Prefecture, which has been designated as a preservation district of traditional buildings. To achieve this aim, we referred to the formula for probability of street blockade for normal city area made by Tokyo Fire Agency. We revised it, considering the width of street under 4 m, structure of houses along the street, and the distance from the house to main street with the width over 4 m. Then, we applied the revised formula to the study area.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.48 no.12
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• pp.969-979
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• 2015

This study applied a probabilistic-based hidden Markov model (HMM) to better characterize drought patterns. In addition, a copula-based bivariate drought frequency analysis was employed to further investigate return periods of the current drought condition in year 2015. The obtained results revealed that western Kangwon area was generally more vulnerable to drought risk than eastern Kangwon area using the 40-year data. Imjin-river watershed including Cheorwon area was the most vulnerable area in terms of severe drought events. Four stations in Han-river watershed showed a joint return period exceeding 1,000 years associated with the drought duration and severity in 2014-2015. Especially, current drought status in Northern Han-river and Imjin-river watershed is most severe drought exceeding 100-year return period.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.13-26
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• 2023

Recently, South Korea has prepared laws and systems to systematically manage rural spaces in response to the era of population decline and is making various efforts to promote related policies. However, various basic studies that can support this are still insufficient. In particular, in this study, the functions and roles of each settlement class were established along with the classification of the sedentary classes in rural areas, and the classification system for rural living services was established, and the hierarchy by functional facilities and the minimum standards for vulnerable areas (accessibility) were established. Specifically, in this study, the settlement class was divided into 4 classes of "central area - midpoint area - small point area - hinterland", and each function and role was presented, and the rural living service classification system was finally reestablished as 10 sectors and 31 functional facilities. In addition, the hierarchy and accessibility standards of rural living service functional facilities was set within 5 to 15 minutes for 'lower and basic services', within 10 to 20 minutes for 'medium and basic services', within 15 to 30 minutes for 'intermediate and complex services', within 20 to 60 minutes for 'high car/complex service' and within 10 minutes for 'urgent service'.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.256-269
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• 2020

Objectives: Everyone has been affected in some way by the COVID-19 pandemic, while some workers face threats to their health due to their jobs as well as worries about spreading the virus to intimate family members. With these concerns in mind, this study aims to identify occupations more vulnerable to COVID-19 and suggests the necessity of providing proper control measures against the risks in a timely manner in Korea. Methods: Daily briefing reports by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) were compiled (n=120) between January 20 and May 31, 2020. A total of 11,486 confirmed cases were included, which were sorted by occasion, area, and occupation. Among them, 2,411 cases were classified with specific occasions and/or areas of infection, while only 544 cases were determined with identifiable occupations. Guidelines for biological hazard management and COVID-19 guidelines for workplaces from domestic and international bodies were enlisted and compared. Results: It is unsurprising to find that healthcare professionals are experiencing the most immediate threat from COVID-19. In addition, service workers with face-to-face practices or indirect contact are also facing high risks. Religion facilities and eating places (dining, drinking bar, café, etc.,) follow. Guidelines and manuals for biological hazards are still lacking in Korea compared to the US and EU. Workplace manuals for managing COVID-19 are neither as comprehensive as the approaches of NIOSH's hierarchy of controls nor inclusive enough for minimizing secondary or tertiary suffering. Conclusions: The COVID-19 crisis is still ongoing and there is no doubt there will be more such events in the future. This analysis suggests that occupational health professionals, amid a pandemic including COVID-19, are urged to anticipate emerging risks related to all sorts of occupations, identify vulnerable workers and working environments, and plan and take actions to protect workers' health.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2007.10a
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• pp.445-448
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• 2007

Korea Peninsula is exposed to landslide problems because large regions of Korea are composed of mountain. As a result, we have a great loss of life and property every year, such as road, bridge, and building. However, conventional survey has many restrictions of time and man power. In recent days, instead of field surveying, remote sensing has our attention for detecting damaged place. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) provides the all-weather capability and complements information available. And through the 2-pass DInSAR technique, we can measure even very small displacement effect. In this study, we generated six interferograms of Kangwondo between 1992 and 1998, and estimated the vulnerable place for landslide.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.235-246
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• 2018

The main purpose of this study is to suggest a methodology for identifying vulnerable region in Choyang creek basin susceptible to soil losses based on runoff aggregation structure and energy expenditure pattern of natural river basin within the framework of power law distribution. To this end geomorphologic factors of every point in the basin of interest are extracted by using GIS, which define tractive force and stream power as well as drainage area, and then their complementary cumulative distributions are graphically analyzed through fitting them to power law distribution to identify the sensitive points within the basin susceptible to soil losses with respect to scaling regimes of tractive force and stream power. It is observed that the range of vulnerable region by scaling regime of tractive force is much narrower than by scaling regime of stream power. This result seems to be due to the tractive force is a kind of scale dependent factor which does not follow power law distribution and does not adequately reflect energy expenditure pattern of river basins. Therefore, stream power is preferred to be a more reasonable factor for the evaluation of soil losses. The methodology proposed in this study can be validated by visualizing the path of soil losses, which is generated from hill-slope process characterized by local slope, to the valley through fluvial process characterized by drainage area as well as local slope.