• Title/Summary/Keyword: Environmental issue

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A Study on Present International Status and Implications for Introduction of Contaminated Land Register System into Korea (토양환경 이력관리제 도입을 위한 해외 사례 고찰)

  • Yoo, Keunje;Yang, Jihoon;Kim, Jae Hoon;Hwang, Sang-Il
    • Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.10-19
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    • 2016
  • Land contamination has emerged as a major environmental and land management issue over the last decade. Although the importance of contaminated land management was continuously increased and many developed countries tried to make advanced contaminated land register system, current Korea soil regulations and policies have not been considered yet. This study analyzed existing or developing contaminated land register system from various countries to suggest implications of environmental decision support. Through this study, the introduction of contaminated land management system as creating a new system in Korea needs to considerable review to the following in order to achieve the objective through a effective adoption and operation (1) we need to establish contaminated land register system by providing a proper legal basis before the imposition of data collection, investigation, and management, (2) sufficient examination is required to identify scope of information disclosure and criteria, contents, and subjects of items from contaminated land register system.

Nickel Material Flow in Korea (니켈의 국내 유통 현황)

  • Lee, Hyun-Bock
    • Economic and Environmental Geology
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    • v.41 no.5
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    • pp.625-633
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    • 2008
  • Uses of nickel have been widened in 20th century thanks to development of steel industry and munitions industry and also the demand from each uses on nickel has grown rapidly. In recent 5 years, the market price of nickel has been in bull market, so the security of supply became a big issue for each nickel user. However the entire material flow of nickel is not completed yet in Korea and not even in advanced countries, so recycling rate of nickel from raw materials to finished goods is not sufficient. Although statistical data and report systems about nickel are unprepared in domestic market, this study is carried out with limited market data for the completed material flow of nickel in domestic market and establishing recycling policies of nickel.

Impact Analysis on the Regional Economy Affected by Environmental Regulations (환경규제가 지역경제에 미치는 파급효과 분석)

  • 김호언
    • Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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    • v.15 no.3
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    • pp.1-13
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    • 1999
  • Since the 1990's, the most important environmental issue on the earth is characterized by "global worming problem". The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) plays an significant role to solve this problem on a worldwide scale. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of $CO_2$ reduction on the Daegu regional economy through 1995 regional input-output coefficients derived from the 1995 national input coefficients table by using non-survey method. The sectoral impacts on output, income, and employment were computed under the decline-unequalized assumption in final demand influenced by $CO_2$ reduction. This article has six main sections. Section 1 is an introduction to this paper. Section 2 explains briefly the derivation method of the regional technical coefficients. Section 3 describes the model building through input-output multipliers. In section 4 regional data on output, income, employment and final demand are computed to estimate the regional impacts. Section 5 deals with impact analysis on the Daegu economy. Section 6 contains a brief summary and concludintg remarks. The research findings of this study can be summarized as follows. In 1995, under the assumption of 10% decrease on an average in final demand sectors, the economy of the region studied decreased \3600 billion of output, ₩1114 billion of income, and 49919 man-years of employment. The percent ratios of each value to the total showed 9.4%, 9.7%, and 9.2%, respectively. The dominant sectors associated with impact analysis within the region are chemicals and chemical products, paper, printing and publishing, and textiles and leather, etc; nevertheless, the least dominant sector is non-metallic mineral products. products.

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Ethical Problem Solving in Engineering: Matrix Guide (공학 분야의 윤리적 문제해결방법: 매트릭스 가이드)

  • Han, Kyong-Hee;Heo, Jun-Haeng;Yun, Il-Gu;Lee, Kang-Taek;Kang, Ho-Jeong
    • Journal of Engineering Education Research
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    • v.15 no.1
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    • pp.61-71
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    • 2012
  • The core issue of ethical problem solving in engineering is to understand what exactly happened and to define its nature. Problems often arise mostly in morally complex situations. Traditional philosophical theories usually focus on extreme conflicts of interest and suggest moral theory-centered problem solving methods. However, these methods are not only difficult to specifically apply to real situations, but also are likely to fail to deal with actual moral issues in engineering fields. This study aims to develop more desirable ethical problem solving methods, based on STS (Science and Technology Studies) and engineering ethics combined. First, we have examined the engineering ethics with implications of an STS perspective, then have analyzed traditional ethical problem solving methods in a critical point of view. This study will suggest a new ethical problem solving method named Matrix Guide, based upon those analyses. Specifically, this study classifies four stages of problem definition, analysis, solving, and feedback. Here, we focus on how to combine technological and non-technological factors in each stage, when we are facing morally complex situations in engineering sectors.

A Case Study on the Evaluation of Noise Characteristics Around the Conventional, Improved and High-speed Turnout System (기존 및 개량 고속분기기의 소음특성 평가에 대한 사례연구)

  • Eum, Ki-Young;Um, Ju-Hwan;Lee, Chin-Hyung
    • Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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    • v.15 no.6
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    • pp.453-458
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    • 2006
  • A turnout system which permits trains to pass from one track to another consists of the switch, the crossing, lead rails which are necessary to connect the switch and the crossing, two guard rails and a switch machine for operating the switch. A turnout is the sole moving part among the railway components and has complex configuration, so the safety has always been raised an issue. In Korea, it is planned to adopt the high speed tilting train, which operates at the maximum speed of 180km/h, at conventional lines by the year of 2010. However, for the application of the tilting train to conventional lines, it is prerequisite to establish a stable turnout system allowing the tilting train to pass through it without reducing speed. Therefore, the improved turnout system for the speed-up of conventional lines has been developed and the prototype of the turnout system has been constructed. In this study, evaluation of noise characteristics around the improved turnout system was performed through the field measurements. Field measurements of noise around the conventional and the high-speed turnout system were also carried out for the comparison.

Fast and Efficient Satellite Imagery Fusion Using DT-CWT Proportional and Wavelet Zero-Padding

  • Kim, Yong-Hyun;Oh, Jae-Hong;Kim, Yong-Il
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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    • v.33 no.6
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    • pp.517-526
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    • 2015
  • Among the various image fusion or pan-sharpening methods, those wavelet-based methods provide superior radiometric quality. However, the fusion processing is not only simple but also flexible, since many low- and high-frequency sub-bands are often produced in the wavelet domain. To address this issue, a novel DT-CWT (Dual-Tree Complex Wavelet Transform) proportional to the fusion method by a WZP (Wavelet Zero-Padding) is proposed. The proposed method produces a single high-frequency image in the spatial domain that is injected into the LRM (Low-Resolution Multispectral) image. Thus, a wavelet domain fusion can be simplified to spatial domain fusion. In addition, in the proposed DT-CWTP (DT-CWT Proportional) fusion method, it is unnecessary to decompose the LRM image by adopting WZP. The comparison indicates that the proposed fusion method is nearly five times faster than the DT-CWT with SW (Substitute-Wavelet) fusion method, meanwhile simultaneously maintaining the radiometric quality. The conducted experiments with WorldView-2 satellite images demonstrated promising results with the computation efficiency and fused image quality.

Development of a Fusion Vegetation Index Using Full-PolSAR and Multispectral Data

  • Kim, Yong-Hyun;Oh, Jae-Hong;Kim, Yong-Il
    • Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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    • v.33 no.6
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    • pp.547-555
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    • 2015
  • The vegetation index is a crucial parameter in many biophysical studies of vegetation, and is also a valuable content in ecological processes researching. The OVIs (Optical Vegetation Index) that of using multispectral and hyperspectral data have been widely investigated in the literature, while the RVI (Radar Vegetation Index) that of considering volume scattering measurement has been paid relatively little attention. Also, there was only some efforts have been put to fuse the OVI with the RVI as an integrated vegetation index. To address this issue, this paper presents a novel FVI (Fusion Vegetation Index) that uses multispectral and full-PolSAR (Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar) data. By fusing a NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) of RapidEye and an RVI of C-band Radarsat-2, we demonstrated that the proposed FVI has higher separability in different vegetation types than only with OVI and RVI. Also, the experimental results show that the proposed index not only has information on the vegetation greenness of the NDVI, but also has information on the canopy structure of the RVI. Based on this preliminary result, since the vegetation monitoring is more detailed, it could be possible in various application fields; this synergistic FVI will be further developed in the future.

Policy research and energy structure optimization under the constraint of low carbon emissions of Hebei Province in China

  • Sun, Wei;Ye, Minquan;Xu, Yanfeng
    • Environmental Engineering Research
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.409-419
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    • 2016
  • As a major energy consumption province, the issue about the carbon emissions in Hebei Province, China has been concerned by the government. The carbon emissions can be effectively reduced due to a more rational energy consumption structure. Thus, in this paper the constraint of low carbon emissions is considered as a foundation and four energies--coal, petroleum, natural gas and electricity including wind power, nuclear power and hydro-power etc are selected as the main analysis objects of the adjustment of energy structure. This paper takes energy cost minimum and carbon trading cost minimum as the objective functions based on the economic growth, energy saving and emission reduction targets and constructs an optimization model of energy consumption structure. And empirical research about energy consumption structure optimization in 2015 and 2020 is carried out based on the energy consumption data in Hebei Province, China during the period 1995-2013, which indicates that the energy consumption in Hebei dominated by coal cannot be replaced in the next seven years, from 2014 to 2020, when the coal consumption proportion is still up to 85.93%. Finally, the corresponding policy suggestions are put forward, according to the results of the energy structure optimization in Hebei Province.

Ground motion selection and scaling for seismic design of RC frames against collapse

  • Bayati, Zeinab;Soltani, Masoud
    • Earthquakes and Structures
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    • v.11 no.3
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    • pp.445-459
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    • 2016
  • Quantitative estimation of seismic response of various structural systems at the collapse limit state is one of the most significant objectives in Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering (PBEE). Assessing the effects of uncertainties, due to variability in ground motion characteristics and random nature of earthquakes, on nonlinear structural response is a pivotal issue regarding collapse safety prediction. Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) and fragility curves are utilized to estimate demand parameters and seismic performance levels of structures. Since producing these curves based on a large number of nonlinear dynamic analyses would be time-consuming, selection of appropriate earthquake ground motion records resulting in reliable responses with sufficient accuracy seems to be quite essential. The aim of this research study is to propose a methodology to assess the seismic behavior of reinforced concrete frames at collapse limit state via accurate estimation of seismic fragility curves for different Engineering Demand Parameters (EDPs) by using a limited number of ground motion records. Research results demonstrate that accurate estimating of structural collapse capacity is feasible through applying the proposed method offering an appropriate suite of limited ground motion records.

Unconfined compressive strength of PET waste-mixed residual soils

  • Zhao, Jian-Jun;Lee, Min-Lee;Lim, Siong-Kang;Tanaka, Yasuo
    • Geomechanics and Engineering
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    • v.8 no.1
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    • pp.53-66
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    • 2015
  • Plastic wastes, particularly polyethylene terephthalate (PET) generated from used bottled water constitute a worldwide environmental issue. Reusing the PET waste for geotechnical applications not only reduces environmental burdens of handling the waste, but also improves inherent engineering properties of soil. This paper investigated factors affecting shear strength improvement of PET-mixed residual soil. Four variables were considered: (i) plastic content; (ii) plastic slenderness ratio; (iii) plastic size; and (iv) soil particle size. A series of unconfined compression tests were performed to determine the optimum configurations for promoting the shear strength improvement. The results showed that the optimum slenderness ratio and PET content for shear strength improvement were 1:3 and 1.5%, respectively. Large PET pieces (i.e., $1.0cm^2$) were favorable for fine-grained residual soil, while small PET pieces (i.e., $0.5cm^2$) were favorable for coarse-grained residual soil. Higher shear strength improvement was obtained for PET-mixed coarse-grained residual soil (148%) than fine-grained residual soils (117%). The orientation of plastic pieces in soil and frictional resistance developed between soil particles and PET surface are two important factors affecting the shear strength performance of PET-mixed soil.