• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.147-158
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• 2011

This study analyzed the linkage characteristics between road runoff and the nearest streams in mountain regions using a discriminant analysis. The road-to-stream linkage is an important characteristic to evaluate whether the contaminant on road surface is transported directly into the nearby channel system. This study evaluated a total of 51 drainage outlets of mountain roads near the Soyanggang Dam. The linkage between road and stream, slope and width of road, and other information necessary for the discriminant analysis have been collected by in situ investigation and by analyzing the Digital Elevation Model. Finally, as independent variables in the discriminant analysis, the contributing road representing the road characteristics (similar to the runoff from the road drainage outlet) and the distance and slope of the connecting channel between road and nearest stream were selected. Among these three, the distance was found to have the highest discriminant power, the contributing road the lowest. Using the discriminant function derived, 40 out of 51 cases (78.4%) were correctly discriminated and the remaining 11 cases (21.6%) were wrongly discriminated. Reasons of wrongly discriminated cases were mainly due to change in drainage outlet direction, excessive runoff, change in road-to-stream path, etc. This result also indicates that the road-to-stream linkage can be introduced or prohibited by exactly the same way.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.17-31
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• 2021

Post-earthquake fire is a common disaster which causes serious safety issues to infrastructures. This study aims to investigate the residual loading capacities of circular concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) columns under post-earthquake fire experimentally and numerically. The experimental programme contains two loading steps - pre-damage cyclic loading at room temperature and transient state tests with constant compression loads. Three finite element models are developed and validated against the test results. Upon validation, a total of 48 numerical results were generated in the parametric study to investigate the effects of thickness and strengths of steel tube, axial compression ratio and damage degree on the fire resistance of circular CFST columns. Based on the analysis on experimental and numerical results, the loading mechanism of circular CFST columns is discussed. A design method is proposed for the prediction of fire resistance time under different seismic pre-damage and compression loads. The predictions by the new method is compared with the newly generated experimental and numerical results and is found to be accurate and consistent with the mean value close to the unity and a coefficient of variation around 1%.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.56-61
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• 2022

In this study, a systematic survey was employed to investigate managers' awareness on the safety culture project in small- to medium-sized industries. The existing regulatory and technology-oriented disaster prevention strategy has been implemented to reduce industrial accidents within a short timeframe, but it is essential to reduce fundamental accidents as well by improving the organizational safety culture or software elements, such as safety awareness. Questionnaires and interviews were conducted to examine the managers' awareness about safety culture, consisting of 17 questions related to safety consulting and with the participation of 191 executives and safety managers. The results showed a significant difference in the self-pay rate of safety consulting depending on the size of the workplace under evaluation. Based on the results, the safety-consulting business focused on providing differentiated consulting support and realistic improvement plans according to the workplace size. The study concluded that it is possible to reduce fundamental human errors and improve organizations' safety awareness or safety culture by employing safety consulting differentiated by workplace size.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.811-816
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• 2022

Even though continuous management and supervision of reinforcement of policies to safeguard accidents at workplace and work sites were implemented. Accident prevention activities such as inspection and diagnosis are urgently required to induce a preliminary investigation to identify the risk factors for each type of work, before the work task to eliminate risks at the worksites. Since safety inspections at work sites were generally conducted through visual inspections, the results of safety inspections may vary depending on the findings and proficiency of the safety officers. The results of those inspections may have loopholes to prevent potential accidents at work. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a risk identification checklist that can effectively perform safety inspections to prevent accidents at work sites. This study initially analyzed the previously developed accident checklist to identify current complications and issues in safety checklists. Based on the findings of major industrial accidents over the past three years, the relationship between accident, workplace, and work type were analyzed refereeing the safety inspection standards. A risk recognition-checklist was developed to provide basic data on identifying risk factors, and inspection guidance at work sites. To prepare for potential accidents by identifying and taking countermeasures to mitigate the high risk and serious accidents at sites by the guidelines of the checklist. The developed inspection checklist has been practically used by experts at work sites to perform safety inspections, and it has been verified its suitability, and feasibility, to prevent or mitigate workplace accidents, including securing the safety and health of field workers. The role of the developed safety checklist has been considered effective at worksites.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.183-194
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• 2022

Background: No study has examined the regulatory factors associated with fatal health problems due to the use of humidified disinfectants (HD) in South Korea. Objectives: This study aimed to identify and discuss the deficiencies and limitations found in the Toxic Chemical Control Acts (TCCA) that failed to prevent the health risk of chemicals in HD products. Methods: The South Korean TCCA was reviewed focusing on acts in operation from 1994 through the end of 2011, the period when HD was allowed in manufacturing and marketing. Results: The TCCA was the act intended to regulate the toxicity of chemicals in HD products. We found the TCCA to lack three key legal clauses which would have been essential to controlling the health risk of HD. First, there was the exemption of toxic and hazard testing for existing chemicals, including chloromethylisothiazolinone (CMIT), methylisothiazolinone (MIT), and benzalkonium chloride (BKC). Secondly, there were no articles requiring industry to provide animal inhalation test result for polymers such as polyhexamethylene guanidine (PHMG) and Oligo(2-)ethoxyethoxyethyl guanidine chloride (PGH). Finally, there was a lack of articles on examining the risk of products as well as on addressing changes in the usage of products. These articles were found to be generally provided in the US Toxic Substance Chemical Act (TSCA) and the EU Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH). Conclusions: In conclusion, the Ministry of Environment of South Korea had not updated key articles for regulating hazardous chemicals, causing large-scale health problems due to HD which had been fundamentally addressed in chemical-related acts in other countries.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.9-19
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• 2023

Drought is a natural disaster that can have serious social impacts. Drought's impact ranges from water supply for humans to ecosystems, but the impact of drought on river water quality requires careful investigation. In general, drought occurs meteorologically and is classified as agricultural drought, hydrological drought, and environmental drought. In this study, the BOD environmental drought is defined using the bivariate copula joint probability distribution model between the meteorological drought index and the river BOD, and based on this, the environmental drought condition index (EDCI-BOD) was proposed. The results of examining the proposed index using past precipitation and BOD observation data showed that EDCI-BOD expressed environmental drought well in terms of river BOD water quality. In addition, by classifying the calculated EDCI-BOD into four levels, namely, 'attention', 'caution', 'alert', and 'seriousness', a practical monitoring stage for environmental drought of BOD was constructed. We further estimated the sensitivity of the stream BOD to meteorological drought, and through this, we could identify the stream section in which the stream BOD responded relatively more sensitively to the occurrence of meteorological drought. The results of this study are expected to provide information necessary for river BOD management in the event of meteorological droughts.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.168-168
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• 2023

The frequent occurrence of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CHABs) in inland waters under climate change seriously damages the ecosystem and human health and is becoming a big problem in South Korea. Satellite remote sensing is suggested for effective monitoring CHABs at a larger scale of water bodies since the traditional method based on sparse in-situ networks is limited in space. However, utilizing a standalone variable of satellite reflectances in common CHABs dual-models, which relies on both chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and phycocyanin or cyanobacteria cells (Cyano-cell), is not fully beneficial because their seasonal variation is highly impacted by surrounding meteorological and bio-environmental factors. Along with the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), monitoring CHABs from space with analyzing the effects of environmental factors is accessible. This study aimed to investigate the potential application of AI in the dual-model strategy (Chl-a and Cyano-cell are output parameters) for monitoring seasonal dynamics of CHABs from satellites over Korean inland waters. The Sentinel-3 satellite was selected in this study due to the variety of spectral bands and its unique band (620 nm), which is sensitive to cyanobacteria. Via the AI-based feature selection, we analyzed the relationships between two output parameters and major parameters (satellite water-leaving reflectances at different spectral bands), together with auxiliary (meteorological and bio-environmental) parameters, to select the most important ones. Several AI models were then employed for modelling Chl-a and Cyano-cell concentration from those selected important parameters. Performance evaluation of the AI models and their comparison to traditional semi-analytical models were conducted to demonstrate whether AI models (using water-leaving reflectances and environmental variables) outperform traditional models (using water-leaving reflectances only) and which AI models are superior for monitoring CHABs from Sentinel-3 satellite over a Korean inland water body.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.2B
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• pp.187-195
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• 2006

A bridge scour management system is developed to evaluate the vulnerability of bridge piers to scour and to help establish effective disaster measures, taking into account the locality and scour characteristics in Korea. This system is programmed using the techniques of the geographical information system(GIS) for the storage, retrieval, and display of information regarding to bridge scour. The system functions are basically divided into two parts; prioritization and maintenance. Bridges are initially screened and prioritized for bridge scour inspection and evaluation using the basic information which is obtained from the office review. The bridge scour evaluation including site investigation is performed and the vulnerability of bridge piers is categorized into six groups taking into account the local scour depth, foundation bearing capacity, foundation type, foundation depth, and present scour condition. The system tabulates and plots all the data and the results.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.155-171
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• 2023

Aiming at the grouting treatment of water inflow in karst conduits, a visualized experiment system for conduit-type grouting blocking was developed. Through the improved water supply system and grouting system, and the optimized multisource information monitoring system, the real-time observation of diffusion and deposition of slurry, and the data acquisition of pressure and velocity during the whole process of grouting were realized, which breaks through the problem that the monitoring element is easy to fail due to slurry adhesion in conventional test system. Based on the grouting experiments in static and flowing water, the diffusion and deposition behavior of the quick-setting slurry under different working conditions were analyzed. The temporal and spatial variation behavior of the pressure and velocity were studied, and the blocking mechanism of the grouting were further revealed. The results showed that: (1) Under the flowing water condition, the counter-flow diffusion distance of slurry was negatively correlated with the flow water velocity and the volume ratio of cement and sodium silicate (C-S ratio), and positively correlated with the grouting volume. The slurry deposition thickness was negatively correlated with the flowing water velocity, and positively correlated with the grouting volume and C-S ratio. (2) The pressure increased slowly before blocking of the flowing water and rapidly after blocking in karst conduits. (3) With the continuous progress of grouting, the flowing water velocity decreased slowly first, then significantly, and finally tended to be stable. According to the research results, some engineering recommendations were put forward for the grouting treatment of the conduit-type water inflow disaster, which has been successfully applied in the treatment project of the China Resources Cement (Pingnan) Limestone Mine. This study provided some guidance and reference for the parameter optimization of grouting for the treatment projects of water inflow in karst conduits.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.298-307
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• 2023

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to analyze the recent trends in patients with work-related musculoskeletal disorders in South Korea and to check the major results by reviewing the literature on the risk factors and prevalence of musculoskeletal diseases related to work. Methods: Industrial disaster data from the Ministry of Employment and Labor from 2012 to 2021 were used, and the literature was reviewed regarding risk factors for musculoskeletal diseases related to work using PubMed and RISS. Results: The trend of patients with work-related musculoskeletal disorders has increased overall since 2017 after declining until 2016, with a particularly notable increase in the average annual number of patients with physical burden work. The average annual rate per ten thousand people for patients with body burden work, non-accidental lower back pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome among work-related diseases was high in the mining industry. The average annual rate per ten thousand people for patients with accidental lower back pain was the highest in the fishing industry. Within the manufacturing field, it was the highest in the shipbuilding and ship repair industry. As a result of the literature review, the search rate for work-related musculoskeletal disease papers in unstructured work was high. In addition, physical stress factors were high among risk factors, and pain areas showed a high rate for the waist. Conclusion: Even after the institutional implementation of a hazard investigation system related to musculoskeletal diseases is implemented, the number of patients with occupational musculoskeletal disorders continues to increase. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct regular surveys and implement effective improvement activities for vulnerable industries or occupations.