• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.38 no.11
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• pp.589-595
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• 2016

This study evaluated the environmental impacts for landfill treatment of the wastewater treatment sludge (WTS) from petrochemical firms by life cycle assessment (LCA) and reviewed the impact reduction by landfill gas (LFG) utilization. The functional unit was 'landfill of 1 ton of WTS', and the system boundary included the process of input and treatment for WTS in landfill site. The impacts were high at landfill process (LP) and leachate treatment process (LTP). Global warming (GWP) and photochemical oxidants creation (POCP) were high at LP, while abiotic depletion (ADP), acidification (AP), eutrophication (EP), ozone depletion (ODP) were high at LTP. The major substances of various impact categories were crude oil (ADP), $NO_X$ (AP, EP), $CH_4$ (GWP, POCP), $Cl_2$ (ODP), respectively. The major factor of ADP, AP, EP was attributed from the generation of electricity used in LTP, and the methane within uncollected LFG was main factor of GWP and POCP. Therefore, electricity consumption reduction is identified to be an impact improvement option, and the flaring system installation or enhanced LFG recovery could be an alternative to reduce impacts. Among the various categories, GWP accounted the highest impact (${\geq}90%$) followed by ADP, POCP. In the avoidance impact resulted from the utilization of LFG, to substitute B-C oil or LNG showed the impact reduction of 32.7% and 12.0%, respectively.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.107-120
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• 2007

The introduction of strategic environmental assessment (SEA) has strengthened and extended the value of environmental impact assessment (EIA) as a foundational tool for sustainable development. In particular, SEA helps to overcome the limitation of project EIA as a 'stand alone' approach, applied relatively late in the decision making cycle. SEA is applied to policy, plan and programme (3P) proposals, when major alternatives are open and systematic consideration can be given to their environmental effects. This process also corresponds to options appraisal of development proposal to find the best practical outcome having regard to all potential impacts. There are imperatives for sustainable development (SD) that are shaping future directions for EIA and SEA internationally, regionally and locally. There is a shift toward more integrative approaches of using EIA and SEA as sustainability tools in cooperated environmental management system (EMS). Korea has established and applied EIA for over twenty years for various projects. Given its coverage, the current EIA system is SEA exclusive. The Prior Environmental Review System (PERS), which is a SEA-type of system, was applied in the late 1990s, mainly for various developing planning programs. The current PERS has been modified as a SEA type system, but in general, policy is not going to be covered.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.125-132
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• 2008

It is desirable that implementation assessment (IA) should be carried out efficiently in order to make successful progress of Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) in watershed management. There are many difficulties in the process of the implementation assessment because of the early stage in the application of TMDL in Korea. This study reviewed the present status of IA and proposed the methodology of its improvement such as flexible application of TMDL ledger, and standardization of assessment index and criteria. The deficient time for assessment period could be corrected by the consideration of the post-procedure after the submission of IA report.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.45-62
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• 2004

Any business activities may have impact on environment to a certain extent. Enterprises must find appropriate approaches to measure the impact on these environmental aspects, which can be used as the basis to direct enterprises' efforts to improve the environmental impact. The method used to evaluate significant factors in life cycle assessment standards is the one most commonly used by enterprises in general to measure environmental impact. By this method, the decisive factors of each environmental aspect are given scores according to the preset scoring standard of the organization. The scores are added up for each aspect and ranked to assess major environmental aspects. The drawback of this assessment method, that is, it ignores the degree to which each of these factors affects the environment, results in poor credibility. Therefore, this study attempts to solve some qualitative problems by applying to fuzzy theory, in particular, by identifying appropriate fuzzy numbers through fuzzy sets and membership function. Moreover, the study seeks to obtain a crisp value in the process of defuzzifization in order to make up for the shortfall of the original method in dealing with relative weight of decisive factors and thus increase its applicability and credibility. The department of light production of an electronics company is used as an example in this study to measure environmental aspects by employing both the traditional significant factor method and the fuzzy environmental impact assessment model proposed in this study. Based on verification and comparison of results, the model proposed in this study is more feasible as it reduces partiality in decision-making by taking the relative weights of decisive factors into consideration.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.511-524
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• 2007

Korea has 30 years of experiences in environmental impact assessment (EIA). Although EIA includes sanitation-public health factor, considering health impacts, among 74 unit projects of 17 sections, health impacts haven't been properly considered or have been ignored in many cases. The increasing awareness on the importance of health impacts has triggered this study to seek an optimal introduction scheme of health impact assessment (HIA). The processes of EIA already include screening, scoping, analysis, impact assessment, consultation, document review, decision making and monitoring, in which they would be the essential parts of HIA. In this context, integrating HIA into the existing EIA process could be the most effective way to use the benefits in both legal and procedural processes existed and to avoid the confusion and overlapping since the close relationships between environment and health impacts might be. Furthermore, it is desirable that the existing sanitation-public health factor should be substituted by and extended to environment-health factor with sufficient determinants to properly consider health impacts. When considering the first step of HIA, the prospective and qualitative approach is suitable more than the retrospective and quantitative one due to the lack of database accumulated. Similarly, an approach based on epidemiology and toxicology could analyze the limited evidences and impacts related to human disease, whereas one based on socio-science and psychology could provide the effective means available for predicting how the people and community will act by the change of surroundings. Checklist approach with various and comprehensive health determinants focused on prospective and qualitative methods will be very useful for more convenient and progressive dissemination of HIA. Various checklist approaches of toolkits could be found from HIA documents elsewhere, for example Westminster Toolkit, and they would be helpful to figure out how to develop common procedures and health determinants for checklist, in which the unique characteristics on korean cultural and political context compared to abroad should be carefully considered since checklist would be the most basic and essential part of HIA. After the establishment of checklist and procedural processes, the pilot projects should be conducted. Main purpose of pilot projects is to apparently prove the effectiveness and profitability of HIA. Pilot projects should be implemented to decide the effectiveness and suitability of HIA for future projects, programs and policies, and should be provided as the positive cases that can be achieved through the proper implementation and progress.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.205-210
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• 2008

Life cycle assessment(LCA) is acknowledged as a valuable tool to quantify the environment impact of agricultural practice as well as final product(biodiesel) considering whole life cycle of the target product. As a preliminary research of LCA study for rapeseed(Brassica napus L.) biodiesel, the methodological issues which have to be regarded with high priority were dealt with. No life cycle inventory(LCI) based on local data are currently available for LCA of rapeseed cultivation, crushing, and conversion to rapeseed methyl ester(RME) in Korea. In this paper, the life cycle of rapeseed and methodological factors which have to be measured for building LCI of each process are provided and discussed, which are including seed, fertilizer, energy use in rapeseed cultivation environment; and crushing, RME conversion, and transportation in biodiesel production.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.73-85
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• 2005

Natural disturbance and environmental pressure on natural ecosystems are gradually increasing, and the cause is significantly related to large-scale environmental pollution, global warming, decreasing biodiversity and habitat fragmentation. Environmental impact assessment(EIA) in Korea has been focused on distribution and composition of fauna and flora as major evaluation aspects in ecosystem assessment. It is well known that those characteristics of flora and fauna strongly depend on characteristics and quality of habitat and ecosystem. However, there is no items to assess habitat and ecosystems of spatial ecological system in EIA. Many countries are trying to develop the EIA items to consider the spatial characteristics of habitat and ecosystem and those ecological dynamics as well as species level. In this stream, landscape ecology is emerging discipline to examine spatial pattern and ecological process within/between habitats and ecosystems. Landscape ecological analysis, as a special tool for ecosystem evaluation, has been appropriately adopted to the EIA system in the advanced countries. This review paper tries to introducing the possibilities of landscape ecological concept into the Korean EIA system.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.299-314
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• 2016

The aim of this paper is to review integrated assessment studies conducted to address the impacts of climate change sea-level rise on agricultural sector and to derive suggestions for improving the integrated assessment process to assist decision-makers in establishing climate change adaptation policy. We collect integrated assessment studies which are based on the impact-pathway analysis, compare their step-by-step procedures and identify main factors addressed in each step. The assessment process is typically carried out in the sequence of scenario development, determination of assessment scope, physical impact assessment, economic analysis and synthesis of the outcomes from each step. We identify two types of integrated assessment. The first one examines the impacts of changes in temperature and/or precipitation on the crop-cultivation patterns and/or agricultural productivity and resulting economic effects on agricultural sector. The other investigates the impacts of sea-level rise on land use/coverage and resulting economic damages in terms of land-value loss where the effects on agriculture is treated as one sector among others. To enhance integrated assessment, we suggest that 1) scenarios need to incorporate the effects of climate change and sea-level rise simultaneously, 2) scope of the assessment needs to be extended to include ecosystem services as well as crop production, 3) social and cultural aspects need to be considered in addition to economic analysis, and 4) synthesis of the outcomes from each step should be able to combine quantitative as well as qualitative information.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.53-68
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• 1994

Initially the paper will explore the concept, evolution and utility of Sustainable Development in the broad context of its links to the EIA process by predicting in advance decisions being made attempts to balance the needs of environmental, economic and social objectives. The paper then considers how an evolving and improved EIA process and in particular with the emphasis increasingly riving from projects to polieies, plans and programmes, can provide q framework to operationalise Sustainable Development with the focus on cumulative impacts, making EIA "problem focussed" and linking policy, environmental planning and assessment. The paper then reviews some of the practical EIA tools and methods that can support the practical application of more susk inable forms of development. The paper concludes by considering the follow ups that are now occurring after the Reo Sumit and suggests that has a Key and powerful role to play in this process, whether at an institutional prettiest policy level.

• International Journal of Quality Innovation
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.32-56
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• 2007

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims to analyze possible impact upon manufacturing process and availability of products, and also study the environmental considerations and potential influence during entire life cycle ranging from procurement, production and utilization to treatment (namely, from cradle to tomb). Based on high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe manufacturing of company A, this case study would involve evaluation of environmental influence during the production process. When the manufacturing process has been improved during "production process" and "forming cooling" stage, it is found that capital input on "electric power" and "water supply" could be reduced, thus helping to sharpen the competitive power of company A, and also ensure sustainable economic and industrial development in accordance with national policies on environmental protection.