• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.503-515
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• 2014

A lot of existing wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are rebuilt or retrofitted for advanced wastewater treatment processes to cope with reinforced effluent criteria of nitrogen and phosphorous. Moreover, how to treat the wasted sludge from WWTPs has been also issued since the discharge of the wasted sludge into ocean is impossible from 2011 due to the London Convention 97 protocol. These trend changes of WWTPs get a motivation to assess environmental and economic impacts from the construction stage to the waste stage in WWTPs. Therefore, this study focuses on evaluation of environmental and economic impacts of the advanced wastewater treatment processes and waste sludge treatment process by using life cycle assessment. Four advanced wastewater treatment processes of Anaerobic/Anoxic/Oxic ($A_2O$), 5 stages-Bamard Denitrification Phosphate (Bardenpho), Virginia Initiative Plant (VIP), and Modified University of Cape Town (MUCT) are chosen to compare the conventional activated sludge (CAS) and three waste sludge treatment methods of land fill, incineration, and composting are used. To evaluate environmental and economic impacts of each advanced wastewater treatment processes, life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) are conducted based on International organization for standardization (ISO) guidelines. The results clearly represent that the $A_2O$ process with composting shows 52% reduction in the environmental impact than the CAS process with landfill. On the other hand, the MUCT process with composting is able to save 62% of the life cycle cost comparing with the CAS process with landfill. This result suggested the qualitative and quantitative criteria for evaluating eco-environmental and economic technologies of advanced treatment processes and also sludge treatment method, where their main influence factors on environmental and economic impacts are analyzed, respectively. The proposed method could be useful for selecting the most efficient and eco-friendly wastewater treatment process and sludge treatment method when retrofitting the existing WWTPs to advanced treatments.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.31-42
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• 2006

Drought indices, such as PDSI (palmer Drought Severity Index), SWSI (Surface Water Supply Index) and SPI (Standardized Precipitation Index), have been developed to assess and forecast an intensity of drought. To find the applicability of groundwater level data to a drought assessment, a correlation analysis between SPI and groundwater levels was conducted for each time series at a drought season in 2001. The comparative results between SPI and groundwater levels of shallow wells of three national groundwater monitoring stations, Chungju Gageum, Yangpyung Gaegun, and Yeongju Munjeong, show that these two factors are highly correlated. In case of SPI with a duration of 1 month, cross-correlation coefficients between two factors are 0.843 at Chungju Gageum, 0.825 at Yangpyung Gaegun, and 0.737 at Yeongju Munjeong. The time lag between peak values of two factors is nearly zero in case of SPI with a duration of 1 month, which means that groundwater level fluctuation is similar to SPI values. Moreover, in case of SPI with a duration of 3 month, it is found that groundwater level can be a leading indicator to predict the SPI values I week later. Some of the national groundwater monitoring stations can be designated as DIW (Drought Index Well) based on the detailed survey of site characteristics and also new DIWs need to be drilled to assess and forecast the drought in this country.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.53-64
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• 2018

In this study, the evaluation to probability of failure for risk assessment of port structures on DCM reinforced soils, where stability and risk assessment are increasing in importance, was performed. As a random variables affecting the risk of DCM improved ground, the design strength, superposition (overlap) of construction, strength of the natural ground, internal friction angle and unit weight of the modified ground were selected and applied to the risk assessment. In addition, the failure probability for the entire system under ordinary conditions and under earthquake conditions were analyzed. As a result, it was found that the highest coefficient of variation in the random variable for the risk assessment of the DCM improved ground is the design strength, but this does not have a great influence on the safety factor, ie, the risk of the system. The main risk factor for the failure probability of the system for the DCM reinforced soils was evaluated as horizontal sliding in case of external stability and compression failure in case of internal stability both at ordinary condition and earthquake condition. In addition, the failure probability for ordinary horizontal sliding is higher than that for earthquake failure, and the failure probability for ordinary compression failure is lower than that for earthquake failure. The ordinary failure probability of the entire system is similar to the failure probability on earthquake condition, but in this case, the risk of earthquake is somewhat higher.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.161-171
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• 2021

This paper presents the findings of a comparative study on minimum weight design and sensitivity evaluation using different experimental design methods for the structural design of an active-type deck support frame (DSF) developed for the float-over installation of an of shore plant topside. The thickness sizing variables of the structural members of a passive-type DSF were considered the design factors, and the output responses were defined using the weight and strength performances. The design of the experimental methods applied in the comparative study of the minimum weight design and the sensitivity evaluation were the orthogonal array design, Box- Behnken design, and Latin hypercube design. A response surface method was generated for each design of the experiment to evaluate the approximation performance of the design space exploration according to the experimental design, and the accuracy characteristics of the approximation were reviewed. Regarding the minimum weight design, the design results, such as numerical costs and weight minimization, of the experimental design for the best design case, were evaluated. The Box- Behnken design method showed the optimum design results for the structural design of the passive-type DSF.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.529-541
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• 2023

Due to the growing concern over forecasting extreme weather events such as droughts caused by climate change, there has been a rising interest in seasonal meteorological forecasts that offer ensemble predictions for the upcoming seven months. Nonetheless, limited research has been conducted in South Korea, particularly in assessing their effectiveness at the catchment-scale. In this study, we assessed the accuracy of ECMWF's seasonal forecasts (including precipitation, temperature, and evapotranspiration) for the period of 2011 to 2020. We focused on 12 multi-purpose reservoir catchments and compared the forecasts to climatology data. Continuous Ranked Probability Skill Score method is adopted to assess the forecast skill, and the linear scaling method was applied to evaluate its impact. The results showed that while the seasonal meteorological forecasts have similar skill to climatology for one month ahead, the skill decreased significantly as the forecast lead time increased. Compared to the climatology, better results were obtained in the Wet season than the Dry season. In particular, during the Wet seasons of the dry years (2015, 2017), the seasonal meteorological forecasts showed the highest skill for all lead times.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.44 no.11
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• pp.903-913
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• 2011

In this paper important factors in determining improvement priorities for water pipes were categorized into the effects of a pipe failure to entire pipe network and the characteristics of individual pipe. Subsequently, mathematical models that can quantify these factors were developed using the Fuzzy techniques. The effects of a pipe failure to entire pipe network and the characteristics of individual pipe that were estimated byFuzzy techniques were coined as Fuzzy Importance Index and Fuzzy Characteristic Index, respectively. The Fuzzy Characteristic Index was further categorized into Fuzzy Deterioration Index and Fuzzy Difficulty Index. Considerations were given to applying weights to specific factors in the developed model depending on the circumstances of model applications. To provide an example of the methodology an example pipe network, Net3, of the EPANET program was used. The Fuzzy Importance Index (FII) and Fuzzy Deterioration Index (FDI) were calculated for the Net3 network by considering the hydraulic effects of a pipe failure on the entire pipe network and the pipe deterioration as one of the individual pipe characteristics. Subsequently, the improvement priorities of the pipes in the Net3 pipe network were established based on the FII and FDI.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.610-618
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• 2008

It is not easy to compare the treatment processes and find an optimum operating condition by the experiments due to influent conditions, treatment processes, various operational conditions and complex factors in real wastewater treatment system and also need a lot of time and costs. In this paper, the activated sludge models are applied to four principal biological wastewater treatment processes, $A_2O$(anaerobic/anoxic/oxic process), Bardenpho(4 steps), VIP(Virginia Initiative Plant) and UCT(University of Cape Town), and are used to compare their environmental and economic assessment for four key processes. In order to evaluate each processes, a new assessment index which can compare the efficiency of treatment performances in various processes is proposed, which considers both environmental and economic cost. It shows that the proposed index can be used to select the optimum processes among the candidate treatment processes as well as to find the optimum condition in each process. And it can find the change of economic and environmental index under the changes of influent flowrate and aerobic reaction size and predict the optimum index under various operation conditions.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.373-386
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• 2019

In The study, is to investigate the spatial characteristics of the Miho stream, which is the main tributary of the Geum River system, and to identify the main factors influencing the water quality using water quality analysis and multivariate analysis. The survey subjects were selected as 7 main sites in the Miho stream water system, From 2012 to 2017, 16 items including weather temperature and weather data were used for multivariate analysis. As a result of the water quality analysis, the average concentration of BOD and COD for 6 years was 3grade (normal) compared with the water quality environmental standard (river) of conditions. The concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus were highest at th upstream site, then decreased and then increased again by the hydrogeological and geomorphological effect. Cluster analysis of spatial and water quality characteristics, it was evaluated as three clusters and the pollution sources is the greatest impact. As a result of principal component analysis and factor analysis on each cluster and mainstream, three to four major components were extracted. Main stream and the Cluster 1, Cluster 3 first principal factor included nitrogen and seasonal factors,first factor of Cluster 2 included nitrogen and water temperature. Nitrogen is the principal factor which affects water quality in Miho stream.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.145-156
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• 2021

Forest fires have frequently occurred around the world, and the damages are increasing. In Korea, most forest fires are initiated by human activities, but climate factors such as temperature, humidity, and wind speed have a great impact on combustion environment of forest fires. In this study, therefore, based on statistics of forest fires in Gyeonggi-do over the past five years, meteorological and hydrological factors (i.e., temperature, humidity, wind speed, precipitation, and drought) were selected in order to quantitatively investigate causal relationships with forest fire. We applied a partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM), which is suitable for analyzing causality and predicting latent variables. The overall results indicated that the measurement and structural models of the PLS-SEM were statistically significant for all evaluation criteria, and meteorological factors such as humidity, temperature, and wind speed affected by amount of -0.42, 0.23 and 0.15 of standardized path coefficient, respectively, on forest fires, whereas hydrological factor such as drought had an effect of 0.23 on forest fires. Therefore, as a practical method, the suggested model can be used for analyzing and evaluating influencing factors of forest fire and also for planning response and preparation of forest fire disasters.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.36 no.6_1
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• pp.1367-1377
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to assess the seismic vulnerability of buildings in Gyeongju city starting with the earthquake that occurred in the city on September 12, 2016, and produce a seismic vulnerability map. 11 influence factors related to geotechnical, physical, and structural indicators were selected to assess the seismic vulnerability, and these were applied as independent variables. For a dependent variable, location data of the buildings that were actually damaged in the 9.12 Gyeongju Earthquake was used. The assessment model was constructed based on random forest (RF) as a mechanic study method and support vector machine (SVM), and the training and test dataset were randomly selected with a ratio of 70:30. For accuracy verification, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was used to select an optimum model, and the accuracy of each model appeared to be 1.000 for RF and 0.998 for SVM, respectively. In addition, the prediction accuracy was shown as 0.947 and 0.926 for RF and SVM, respectively. The prediction values of the entire buildings in Gyeongju were derived on the basis of the RF model, and these were graded and used to produce the seismic vulnerability map. As a result of reviewing the distribution of building classes as an administrative unit, Hwangnam, Wolseong, Seondo, and Naenam turned out to be highly vulnerable regions, and Yangbuk, Gangdong, Yangnam, and Gampo turned out to be relatively safer regions.