• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.699-708
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• 2023

Nuclear power plants (NPPs) consider possible external events, including natural hazards, during the design phase to ensure safe operation. However, in recent years, due to the increasing probability of natural hazards exceeding the design, a careful review of extreme natural hazards and unforeseen external events during the design phase has become necessary. In this study, the objective was to screen potential extreme natural hazards at NPP sites in Korea. Initially, we investigated and analyzed the characteristics of NPP sites and the events caused by external hazards. Furthermore, we analyzed existing literature and research data to establish screening procedures and criteria that suit the actual conditions of domestic NPPs. Based on these criteria and data, we conducted qualitative screening for each NPP site and identified potential extreme natural hazards through quantitative screening and walkdown. As a result of the screening, in addition to internal flooding caused by heavy rain, wind pressure and extreme air pressure caused by extreme winds were screened as potential extreme natural hazards common to all sites. Additionally, at the Kori site, storm surge was selected as the most significant potential extreme natural hazard.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.628-636
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• 2018

Because large buoys are mainly made of steel, they are heavy and vulnerable to corrosion by sea water. This makes buoy installation and maintenance difficult. Moreover, vessel collision accidents with buoys and damage to vessels due to the material of buoys (e.g., steel) are reported every year. Recently, light buoys adopting eco-friendly and lightweight materials have come into the spotlight in order to solve the previously-mentioned problems. In Korea, a new lightweight buoy with a 7-Nautical Mile lantern adopting expanded polypropylene (EPP) and aluminum to create a buoyant body and tower structure, respectively, was developed in 2017. When these light buoys are operated in the ocean, the visibility and angle of light from the lantern installed on the light buoys changes, which may cause them to function improperly. Therefore, research on the performance of light buoys is needed since the weight distribution and motion characteristics of these new buoys differ from conventional models. In this study, stability estimation and motion analyses for newly-developed buoys under various environmental conditions considering a mooring line were carried out using ANSYS AQWA. Numerical simulations for the estimation of wind and current loads were performed using commercial CFD software, Siemens STAR-CCM+, to increase the accuracy of motion analysis. By comparing the estimated maximum significant motions of the light buoys, it was found that waves and currents were more influential in the motion of the buoys. And, the estimated motions of the buoys became larger as the sea state became worser, which might be the reason that the peak frequencies of the wave spectra got closer to those of the buoys.

• Composites Research
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.192-198
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• 2021

Due to enormous market growing of electric vehicles without combustion engine, reducing unwanted BSR (buzz, squeak, and rattle) noise is highly demanded for vehicle quality and performance. Particularly, innerbelt weatherstrips which not only block wind noise, rain, and dust from outside, but also reduce noise and vibration of door glass and vehicle are required to exhibit high damping properties for improved BSR performance of the vehicle. Thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs), which can be recycled and have lighter weight than thermoset elastomers, are receiving much attention for weatherstrip material, but TPEs exhibit low material damping and compression set causing frictional noise and vibration between the door glass and the weatherstrip. In this study, high damping EPDM (ethylene-propylene-diene monomer)/PP (polypropylene) thermoplastic vulcanizates (TPV) were investigated by varying EPDM/PP ratio and ENB (ethylidene norbornene) fraction in EPDM. Viscoelastic properties of TPV materials were characterized by assuming that the material damping is directly related to the viscoelasticity. The optimum material damping factor (tanδ peak 0.611) was achieved with low PP ratio (14 wt%) and high ENB fraction (8.9 wt%), which was increased by 140% compared to the reference (tanδ 0.254). The improved damping is believed due to high fraction of flexible EPDM chains and higher interfacial slippage area of EPDM particles generated by increasing ENB fraction in EPDM. The stick-slip test was conducted to characterize frictional noise and vibration of the TPV weatherstrip. With improved TPV material damping, the acceleration peak of frictional vibration decreased by about 57.9%. This finding can not only improve BSR performance of electric vehicles by designing material damping of weatherstrips but also contribute to various structural applications such as urban air mobility or aircrafts, which require lightweight and high damping properties.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.325-338
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• 2023

Korean fir (Abies koreana Wilson) is one of the most important environmental indicator tree species for assessing climate change impacts on coniferous forests in the Korean Peninsula. However, due to the nature of alpine and subalpine regions, it is difficult to conduct regular field surveys of Korean fir, which is mainly distributed in regions with altitudes greater than 1,000 m. Therefore, this study analyzed the vegetation change trend of Korean fir using regularly observed remote sensing data. Specifically, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), land surface temperature (LST), and precipitation data from Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievalsfor GPM from September 2003 to 2020 for Hallasan and Jirisan were used to analyze vegetation changes and their association with environmental variables. We identified a decrease in NDVI in 2020 compared to 2003 for both sites. Based on the NDVI difference maps, areas for healthy vegetation and high mortality of Korean fir were selected. Long-term NDVI time-series analysis demonstrated that both Hallasan and Jirisan had a decrease in NDVI at the high mortality areas (Hallasan: -0.46, Jirisan: -0.43). Furthermore, when analyzing the long-term fluctuations of Korean fir vegetation through the Hodrick-Prescott filter-applied NDVI, LST, and precipitation, the NDVI difference between the Korean fir healthy vegetation and high mortality sitesincreased with the increasing LST and decreasing precipitation in Hallasan. Thissuggests that the increase in LST and the decrease in precipitation contribute to the decline of Korean fir in Hallasan. In contrast, Jirisan confirmed a long-term trend of declining NDVI in the areas of Korean fir mortality but did not find a significant correlation between the changes in NDVI and environmental variables (LST and precipitation). Further analyses of environmental factors, such as soil moisture, insolation, and wind that have been identified to be related to Korean fir habitats in previous studies should be conducted. This study demonstrated the feasibility of using satellite data for long-term monitoring of Korean fir ecosystems and investigating their changes in conjunction with environmental conditions. Thisstudy provided the potential forsatellite-based monitoring to improve our understanding of the ecology of Korean fir.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.37 no.1 s.106
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• pp.12-25
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• 2004

Physicochemical parameters, plankton biomass, and sediment were surveyed from 1998 to 2000 at two months interval in a eutrophic coastal lagoon(Lake Hwajinpo, Korea). The lake is separated from the sea by a narrow sand dune. Littoral zone is well vegetated with leafing-leaved aquatic plants. The lake basin is divided into two subbasins by a shallow sill. It has intrusion of seawater by permeation and stormy waves. Stable chemoclines are formed by salinity difference at 1m depth all the year round. DO was often very low (< 1 mg$O_2\;L^{-1}$) at hypolimnion. Temperature inversions were observed in November. Nitrate and ammonium concentrations were very low(< (1.1 mgN $L^{-1}$), even though TN was usually 2.0 ${\sim}$ 3.5 mgN $L^{-1}$. TN/TP was generally lower than the Redfield ratio. Transparency was 0.2 ${\sim}$ 1.7 m, and COD, TP, and TN of sediment were 3.1 ${\sim}$ 40.3 mg$O_2\;g^{-1}$, 0.91 ${\sim}$ 1.39 mgP $g^{-1}$, and 0.34 ${\sim}$ 3.07 mgN $g^{-1}$, respectively. Phytoplankton chlorophyll- a concentrations were mostly over 40 mg $m^{-3}$. Two basins showed different phytoplankton communities with Oscillatoria so., Trachelomonas sp., Schizochlamys gelatinosa, and Anabaena spiroides dominant in South basin, and with Trachelomons sp., Schroederia so., schizochlamys gelatinosa, and Trachelomonas sp. dominant in the North basin. The seasonal succession of phytoplankton was very fast, possibly due to sudden changes in physical conditions, such as wind, turbidity, salinity and light.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.38 no.2 s.171
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• pp.101-111
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• 2005

The objectives of this study we to assess the extent and degree of environmental contamination and to draw general conclusions on the fate of toxic elements derived from mining activities in Korea. 인t abandoned mines with four base-metal mines and four Au-Ag mines were selected and the results of environmental surveys in those areas were discussed. In the base-metal mining areas, the Sambo Pb-Zn-barite, the Shinyemi Pb-Zn-Fe, the Geodo Cu-Fe and the Shiheung Cu-Pb-Zn mine, significant levels of Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn were found in mine dump soils developed over mine waste materials, tailings and slag. Furthermore, agricultural soils, stream sediments and stream water near the mines were severely contaminated by the metals mainly due to the continuing dispersion downstream and downslope from the sites, which was controlled by the feature of geography, prevailing wind directions and the distance from the mine. In e Au-Ag mining areas, the Kubong, the Samkwang, the Keumwang and the Kilkok mines, elevated levels of As, Cd, Cu, Pb and Zn were found in tailings and mine dump soils. These levels may have caused increased concentrations of those elements in stream sediments and waters due to direct dis-charge downstream from tailings and mine dumps. In the Au-Ag mines, As would be the most characteristic contaminant in the nearby environment. Arsenic and heavy metals were found to be mainly associated with sulfide gangue minerals, and mobility of these metals would be enhanced by the effect of oxidation. According to sequential extraction of metals in soils, most heavy metals were identified as non-residual chemical forms, and those are very susceptible to the change of ambient conditions of a nearby environment. As application of pollution index (PI), giving data on multi-element contamination in soils, over 1.0 value of the PI was found in soils sampled at and around the mining areas.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.111-117
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• 2008

We estirmted the yearly and monthly variation in discharge from the Nakdong River Barrage. We studied the total monthly discharge, the mean daily discharge, and the maximum daily discharge based on the observational discharge data for the 11-year period 1996-2006. We also examined the correlation between the discharge and the meteorologiml factors that influence the river inflow. The results from this study are as follows. (1) The total monthly discharge for 11 years at the Nakdong River Barrage was $224,576.8{\times}10^6\;m^3$: The daily maximum was in 2003, with $56,292.3{\times}10^6\;m^3$. The largest daily mean release discharges occurred in August with $52,634.2{\times}10^6\;m^3$ (23.4% of the year), followed by July and September in that order with 23.1 and 17%, respectively. (2) The monthly pattern of discharge could be divided into the flood season for the period July-September (discharge =$1000{\times}10^6\;m^3$/day), the normal season from April to June and October (discharge=$300{\times}10^6\;m^3$/day), and the drought season from December to March (discharge < $300{\times}10^6\;m^3$/day). (3) Periods of high temperature, low evaporation loss, and short sunshine duration produced a much higher discharge in general. Conditions of low rainfall and high evaporation loss, as was the rose in 2003, tended to reduce the discharge, but high rainfall and low evaporation loss tended to increase the discharge as it did in 200l. (4) The dominant wind directions during periods of high discharge were NNE (15.5%), SW and SSW (13.1%), S(12.1%), and NE (10.8%) This results show that it run bring on accumulation of fresh water when northern winds are dominant, and it run flow out fresh water toward offslwre when southern winds are dominant.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.64-80
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• 2018

In Korea, citizens can only know general information about crime. Thus it is difficult to know how much they are exposed to crime. If the police can predict the crime risky area, it will be possible to cope with the crime efficiently even though insufficient police and enforcement resources. However, there is no prediction system in Korea and the related researches are very much poor. From these backgrounds, the final goal of this study is to develop an automated crime prediction system. However, for the first step, we build a big data set which consists of local real crime information and urban physical or non-physical data. Then, we developed a crime prediction model through machine learning method. Finally, we assumed several possible scenarios and calculated the probability of crime and visualized the results in a map so as to increase the people's understanding. Among the factors affecting the crime occurrence revealed in previous and case studies, data was processed in the form of a big data for machine learning: real crime information, weather information (temperature, rainfall, wind speed, humidity, sunshine, insolation, snowfall, cloud cover) and local information (average building coverage, average floor area ratio, average building height, number of buildings, average appraised land value, average area of residential building, average number of ground floor). Among the supervised machine learning algorithms, the decision tree model, the random forest model, and the SVM model, which are known to be powerful and accurate in various fields were utilized to construct crime prevention model. As a result, decision tree model with the lowest RMSE was selected as an optimal prediction model. Based on this model, several scenarios were set for theft and violence cases which are the most frequent in the case city J, and the probability of crime was estimated by $250{\times}250m$ grid. As a result, we could find that the high crime risky area is occurring in three patterns in case city J. The probability of crime was divided into three classes and visualized in map by $250{\times}250m$ grid. Finally, we could develop a crime prediction model using machine learning algorithm and visualized the crime risky areas in a map which can recalculate the model and visualize the result simultaneously as time and urban conditions change.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.28-39
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• 2019

In the design process of counter measures against the beach erosion, information like the main sediment transport mode and yearly net amount of longshore and cross shore transport is of great engineering value. In this rationale, we numerically analyzed the yearly sediment budget of the Mang-Bang beach which is suffering from erosion problem. For the case of cross sediment transport, Bailard's model (1981) having its roots on the Bagnold's energy model (1963) is utilized. In doing so, longshore sediment transport rate is estimated based on the assumption that longshore transport rate is determined by the available wave energy influx toward the beach. Velocity moments required for the application of Bailard's model (1981) is deduced from numerical simulation of the nonlinear shoaling process over the Mang-Bang beach of the 71 wave conditions carefully chosen from the wave records. As a wave driver, we used the consistent frequency Boussinesq Eq. by Frelich and Guza (1984). Numerical results show that contrary to the Bailard's study (1981), Irribaren NO. has non negligible influence on the velocity moments. We also proceeds to numerically simulate the yearly sediment budget of Mang-Bang beach. Numerical results show that for ${\beta}=41.6^{\circ}$, the mean orientation of Mang-Bang beach, north-westwardly moving longshore sediment is prevailing over the south-eastwardly moving sediment, the yearly amount of which is simulated to reach its maxima at $125,000m^3/m$. And the null pint where north-westwardly moving longshore sediment is balanced by the south-eastwardly moving longshore sediment is located at ${\beta}=47^{\circ}$. For the case of cross shore sediment, the sediment is gradually moving toward the shore from the April to mid October, whereas these trends are reversed by sporadically occurring energetic wind waves at the end of October and March. We also complete the littoral drift rose of the Mang-Bang beach, which shows that even though the shore line is temporarily retreated, and as a result, the orientation of Mang-Bang beach is larger than the orientation of null pont, south-eastwardly moving longshore sediment is prevailing. In a case that the orientation of Mang-Bang beach is smaller than the orientation of null pont, north-westwardly moving longshore sediment is prevailing. And these trend imply that the Mang-Bang beach is stable one, which has the self restoring capability once exposed to erosion.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.100-119
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• 2020

During recent years, the heat environment and particulate matter (PM₁₀) have become serious environmental problems, as increases in heat waves due to rising global temperature interact with weakening atmospheric wind speeds. There exist urban heat islands and urban pollution islands with higher temperatures and air pollution concentrations than other areas. However, few studies have examined these issues together because of a lack of micro-scale data, which can be constructed from spatial data. Today, with the help of satellite images and big data collected by private telecommunication companies, detailed spatial distribution analyses are possible. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the spatial distribution patterns of urban heat islands and urban pollution islands within Busan Metropolitan City and to compare the distributions of the two phenomena. In this study, the land surface temperature of Landsat 8 satellite images, air temperature and particulate matter concentration data derived from a private automated meteorological observation system were gridded in 30m × 30m units, and spatial analysis was performed. Analysis showed that simultaneous zones of urban heat islands and urban pollution islands included some vulnerable residential areas and industrial areas. The political migration areas such as Seo-dong and Bansong-dong, representative vulnerable residential areas in Busan, were included in the co-occurring areas. The areas have a high density of buildings and poor ventilation, most of whose residents are vulnerable to heat waves and air pollution; thus, these areas must be considered first when establishing related policies. In the industrial areas included in the co-occurring areas, concrete or asphalt concrete-based impervious surfaces accounted for an absolute majority, and not only was the proportion of vegetation insufficient, there was also considerable vehicular traffic. A hot-spot analysis examining the reliability of the analysis confirmed that more than 99.96% of the regions corresponded to hot-spot areas at a 99% confidence level.