• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.20-35
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• 2021

Objectives: Waste treatment by incineration is gradually increasing as the emission of harmful substances has decreased owing to developments in incineration technology. However, residents living near incinerators continue to express anxiety regarding the effects on their health. Therefore, we attempted to summarize the health impact of incinerators by comprehensively reviewing the recently reported literature. Methods: Sixty-two epidemiological research papers related to incineration and health effects were selected from the Google Scholar database and analyzed (from between January 2001 and December 2019). Results: When compared to older incinerators, newer incinerators established after 2000 are considered relatively safe in terms of health effects. Nevertheless, there have been some studies that have linked them to various diseases, such as malignant tumors including soft tissue cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, reproductive disorders, respiratory diseases, and more. In addition, incinerator workers and local residents are considered to be exposed to dioxins and some heavy metals from the incinerator. Since most studies included subjects exposed to older incinerators, it is difficult to apply these results to the health impact assessment of new incinerators. However, it is not appropriate to conclude that new incinerators made with state-of-the-art technology are safe, as chronic environmental diseases caused by hazardous substances tend to appear only after prolonged exposure. Conclusions: In terms of environmental health, it is necessary to continuously monitor the health effects of incinerators. Also, there is a need to develop a research methodology that can minimize various confounders in incineration-related epidemiological study.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.19-31
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• 2012

The main objectives of this research are to compile all the researches published in the registered academic journals to study the trends of researches and analyze the relationships between research contents and the social factors so that the accomplishments of community related researches and future tasks can be identified. For this purpose, 97 papers published between 1973 and July 2011 were chronologically organized and analyzed in terms of research methods, main contents, and their relationship with social factors. The key findings are as follows; 1) Researches on multi-family-housing community started in 1973 mainly focusing on the social factors of neighbors in a complex; since 2000, however, the researches on physical factors were increased the most followed by psychological and social factors accordingly. 2) The research findings were not fully developed to give a guidance for appropriate space programs or an analysis of residents' preference on facilities. The cause of this shortfall is due to the fact that there was a lack of studies on residents' usage of community facilities based on quantified database. 3) More comprehensive researches should be conducted in the future for vitalizations of community through facility supply system and design guidelines, development and operation of community programs and measures to enhance community awareness targeted on public housing and more diverse types of housing being apart from typical multi-family-houisng provide by private sector.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.35 no.4 s.129
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• pp.359-366
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• 2002

The damages from the natural disasters, especially from the floods, have been increasing. Therefore, it is imperative to establish a BMP to diminish the damages from the floods and to enhance the welfare of the nation. Developed countries have been generating and utilizing flood risk maps to raise the alertness of the residents, and thereby achieving efficient flood management. The major objectives of this research were to develop a prototype management system for flood risk map to forecast the boundaries oi the inundation and to plot them through the integration of geographic and hydrologic database. For more efficient system development, the user requirement analysis was made. The GIS database design was done based on the results from the research work of river information standardization. A GIS database for the study area was built by using topographic information to support the hydrologic modeling. The developed prototype include several modules; river information edition module, map plotting module, and hydrologic modeling support module. Each module enabled the user to edit graphic and attribute data, to analyze and to represent the modeling results visually. Subjects such as utilization of the system and suggestions for future development were discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.61-74
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• 2011

The author analyses the challenging activities of Japanese libraries in this decade by launching two keywords; "product-sharing" and "outcome generation." "Product-sharing" means that libraries share knowledge, skills, and records which are produced as the result of the services or in the process of activities. And "outcome generation" means that libraries generate any efficiency or effectiveness through their services to users. Using these concepts, reported are the current situation and aspects of Japanese libraries which try to make various contributions to the society; research and learning of the people, and education and training for professional librarians, and so on. In the analysis, the author shows some examples of "product-sharing" at first, including the records of reference transaction and the multi-functioned online public access catalogue. Especially, focused is on the various possibility and adoptability of the Collaborative Reference Database System of the National Diet Library of Japan. This system is one of digital reference service in Japan, and the database of reference transaction records is expected to be useful for research and academic studyies as knowledge-base of professional librarians. And the system is also expected to be a platform for LIS education and professional development in the e-learning environment. Secondly, as the examples of "outcome generation", explained are the problem-solving-type activities, and provision of the collection about books on struggling against disease and illness. A few examples of outcome in the problem-solving-type activities are these; increase of sales in the services for shop managers, business persons, and entrepreneurs, contribution to affluent daily life by providing the local information services to residents and neighbourhoods, and etc. And for both the patients with serious cases and their family or those who nurse them, books about other persons' notes or memorandum are the greatest support, and sometime healing. The author discuss the 'raison d'etre' of these activities focusing on public libraries in Japan.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.30
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• pp.10.1-10.14
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• 2015

Recent cohort studies have relied on exposure prediction models to estimate individual-level air pollution concentrations because individual air pollution measurements are not available for cohort locations. For such prediction models, geographic variables related to pollution sources are important inputs. We demonstrated the computation process of geographic variables mostly recorded in 2010 at regulatory air pollution monitoring sites in South Korea. On the basis of previous studies, we finalized a list of 313 geographic variables related to air pollution sources in eight categories including traffic, demographic characteristics, land use, transportation facilities, physical geography, emissions, vegetation, and altitude. We then obtained data from different sources such as the Statistics Geographic Information Service and Korean Transport Database. After integrating all available data to a single database by matching coordinate systems and converting non-spatial data to spatial data, we computed geographic variables at 294 regulatory monitoring sites in South Korea. The data integration and variable computation were performed by using ArcGIS version 10.2 (ESRI Inc., Redlands, CA, USA). For traffic, we computed the distances to the nearest roads and the sums of road lengths within different sizes of circular buffers. In addition, we calculated the numbers of residents, households, housing buildings, companies, and employees within the buffers. The percentages of areas for different types of land use compared to total areas were calculated within the buffers. For transportation facilities and physical geography, we computed the distances to the closest public transportation depots and the boundary lines. The vegetation index and altitude were estimated at a given location by using satellite data. The summary statistics of geographic variables in Seoul across monitoring sites showed different patterns between urban background and urban roadside sites. This study provided practical knowledge on the computation process of geographic variables in South Korea, which will improve air pollution prediction models and contribute to subsequent health analyses.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.125-139
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• 2021

Background: In Korea, the health gap widens due to the number of medical resources and access to medical services between metropolitan and rural. The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of residential migration on medical utilization and accessibility. Methods: This study extracted 528,516 claimed cases in the National Health Insurance Service-Cohort Sample Database from 2006 to 2015. Subjects were classified into two groups by the magnitude of the region, the metropolitan and the rural. The inversed probability weights were calculated for each group. And coefficients of the two-part model were estimated by generalized estimation equation. Results: Those who moved region from metropolitan to rural tend to increase the length of stay and inpatients with ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) disease. Contrariwise, those who moved areas from rural to metropolitan tend to decrease the total medical cost, the adjusted patient days, the number of outpatients and the number of outpatients and inpatients with ACSC disease. Conclusion: This study identified that between the residents who continued to reside in the region and the migrants, there were significant differences in the medical accessibility, quality of primary care, and unmet medical need.

• Research in Community and Public Health Nursing
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.429-437
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• 2011

Purpose: The purposes of this study were to describe the prevalence of low weight and to investigate related factors contributing to low weight in community-dwelling older adults. Methods: From the database of the Fourth Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES-IV), the researchers selected 2,964 older adults aged over 65. The original study was a population-based epidemiological survey of health and nutrition with a stratified multistage clustered probability design. Data were analyzed using ${\chi}^2$-test and multiple logistic regression with the SPSS/WIN 18.0 program. Results: The prevalence of low weight in older adults was 4.7%. The prevalence of low weight was different according to demographic characteristics. That is, the rate was higher in male elders, older ones, and rural residents. In the cases of current smoking, frequent alcohol consumption and no chronic disease, the prevalence of low weight was higher. Age, gender, area of residence, and current smoking were found to be contributing factors to low weight in community-dwelling older adults. Conclusion: The result of this study provides important insights into possible reasons for low weight in community- dwelling older adults and suggests that low weight should be considered in promoting older adults' health.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.117-129
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• 2010

The purpose of this paper is to develop a web-based information system for rural settlement environment diagnosis which is useful to apply the village based evaluation for new rural development projects. To achieve this purpose, this study performed : 1) analyzing the business process in the field of rural settlement environment diagnosis, 2) designing the data flow diagram and the database based on settlement environment diagnostic indices(SEDI), and 3) developing the system using APM (Apache, PHP, and MySQL) of web-system development environment. The developed system was applied to the study rural villages for testing of efficient and logical working. Users of the system, such as, researchers, decision makers, and rural residents, can input directly the village data to diagnose through a file format of Excel in MS Office. Futhermore, they can analyze the visual results with graphic and graph types, simultaneously. From the results of this study, it showed that the developed system enables decision-makers not only to assist the planning process of the rural village development project, but also to improve the level of information technology in the research and planning field concerning with rural development.

• The Korean Journal of Health Service Management
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.51-64
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among staffing, occupancy rate, upward level change of long-term care need, and evaluation grade of facility. Data were obtained from National Health Insurance Corporation Database. Occupancy rate and evaluation grade were highest in National/public operating facilities, while they were worst in individual operating facilities. The percents of A or B grade in evaluation grade (by newly enforced law) is highest in National/public operating facilities. Multiple regression analysis showed that upward level change of care needs was very weakly associated with the number of doctors. Evaluation grade showed a weak and significant association with occupancy ratey(by old-version law)(r=.20, p<.01), upward level change of care need in group home(r=.23, p<.01) Staffing in facility did not show significantly consistent association with upward level change of care needs, evaluation grade, and occupancy rate.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.27-41
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• 2010

This study developed a settlement environment diagnostic indices (SEDI) of rural villages which can apply to analyze variable conditions of villages having development projects. The index consists of 5 diagnostic areas (first level) with 13 items (second level), including detail indices of 40 criteria (third level) defined by specialists' brainstorming process. In order to develop the index system, object-oriented approach was used to extract the 5 diagnostic areas (infra-basic settlement facility, life condition & environmental resources, industry & economic infrastructure, community, and residents) from rural villages. For the 40 criteria, it was introduced a quantification method that all villages have absolute values in national level, not relative value between villages within an unit area. The diagnostic diagram and table were developed to evaluate the villages compositively. The developed SEDI was applied to study areas, 56 villages in 2 subdivision areas of county, located on county of Keumsan. Applicability of the index system, database system should be developed with the surveying method of data in village level.