• Title/Summary/Keyword: International Environmental Agreement

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FE and ANN model of ECS to simulate the pipelines suffer from internal corrosion

  • Altabey, Wael A.
    • Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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    • v.3 no.3
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    • pp.297-314
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    • 2016
  • As the study of internal corrosion of pipeline need a large number of experiments as well as long time, so there is a need for new computational technique to expand the spectrum of the results and to save time. The present work represents a new non-destructive evaluation (NDE) technique for detecting the internal corrosion inside pipeline by evaluating the dielectric properties of steel pipe at room temperature by using electrical capacitance sensor (ECS), then predict the effect of pipeline environment temperature (${\theta}$) on the corrosion rates by designing an efficient artificial neural network (ANN) architecture. ECS consists of number of electrodes mounted on the outer surface of pipeline, the sensor shape, electrode configuration, and the number of electrodes that comprise three key elements of two dimensional capacitance sensors are illustrated. The variation in the dielectric signatures was employed to design electrical capacitance sensor (ECS) with high sensitivity to detect such defects. The rules of 24-electrode sensor parameters such as capacitance, capacitance change, and change rate of capacitance are discussed by ANSYS and MATLAB, which are combined to simulate sensor characteristic. A feed-forward neural network (FFNN) structure are applied, trained and tested to predict the finite element (FE) results of corrosion rates under room temperature, and then used the trained FFNN to predict corrosion rates at different temperature using MATLAB neural network toolbox. The FE results are in excellent agreement with an FFNN results, thus validating the accuracy and reliability of the proposed technique and leads to better understanding of the corrosion mechanism under different pipeline environmental temperature.

Prediction of Time-dependent Lateral Movement Induced by Differential Shortening in Tall Buildings Using Construction Stage Analysis

  • Ha, Taehun;Kim, Sangdae;Lee, Sungho
    • International Journal of High-Rise Buildings
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    • v.6 no.1
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    • pp.11-19
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    • 2017
  • High-rise buildings move during construction due to time-dependent material properties of concrete (creep and shrinkage), construction sequences, and structural shapes. The building movements, including vertical and horizontal displacements, result from the sum of axial and lateral deformation of vertical members at each level. In addition to the vertical shortenings, the lateral movement induced by differential shortening can have adverse effects on the construction tolerance and serviceability of non-structural elements such as elevators and curtain walls. In this study a construction stage analysis method is developed to predict lateral movement induced by shortening, including the effect of creep and shrinkage. The algorithm of construction stage analysis is combined with the FE analysis program. It is then applied to predict lateral movement of a 58-story reinforced concrete building that was constructed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Gravity induced lateral movement of this building is predicted by the construction stage analysis. A field three-dimensional laser scanning survey is carried out to verify the prediction results, and satisfactory agreement is obtained.

The Role of Intellectual Property Rights for Conserving Biological Diversity - Patent Law Treaty for Protecting Genetic Resources and Traditional Knowledge - (생물다양성보전을 위한 지적재산권의 역할 연구 - 유전자원과 전통지식 보호를 위한 특허법의 역할 중심으로 -)

  • Kang, Gil-Mo;Yeom, Jae-Ho;Doh, Seong-Jae;Lee, C. Mi-Jin;Kwon, Suk-Jae
    • Ocean and Polar Research
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    • v.29 no.1
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    • pp.43-53
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    • 2007
  • Recently, controversy over intellectual property rights for protecting genetic resources and traditional knowledge has been emerging. Very active debates and global discussions are being carried out in various international organizations for possible approaches to be taken for these properties, and for the fair and equal sharing of the benefits from these intellectual properties. There is a need to evaluate adopting a sui generis system which is being pushed by developing nations, or adopting a policy which will guaranteee benefit sharing such as sharing royalties from marketing final products, technical transfers, capacity building, and participating in research activities. Also, it is very important to examine the legal issues concerning genetic resources based on Convention on Biological Diversity for the fair and equal sharing of the benefits with developing nations, at the same time assuring developed nations of access to genetic resources.

A Study on Determining an Appropriate Power Trading Contracts to Promote Renewable Energy Systems

  • Choi, Yeon-Ju;Kim, Sung-Yul
    • International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing-Green Technology
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    • v.5 no.5
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    • pp.623-630
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    • 2018
  • The renewable energy systems have been in the spotlight as an alternative for environmental issues. Therefore, the governmental policies are being implemented to spread of promote power generation system using renewable energy in various countries around the world. In addition, Korea has also developed a policy called the power trading contract which can profit from electricity produced from renewable power generation system through Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) and Korea Power Exchange (KPX). As a result, the power trading contracts can trade power after self-consuming in-house by using small-scale renewable power system for residential customers as well as electricity retailers. The power trading contracts applicable as a small-scale power system have a 'Net metering (NM)' and a 'Power Purchase Agreement (PPA)', and these two types of power trading contracts trade surplus power, but payment method of each power trading is different. The microgrid proposed in this paper is based on grid connected microgrid using Photovoltaic (PV) system and Energy Storage System (ESS), that supplied power to residential demand, we evaluate the operation cost of microgrid by power demand in each power trading contracts and propose the appropriate power trading contracts according to electricity demand.

Prediction of Bending Fatigue Life of Cracked Out-of-Plane Gusset Joint Repaired by CFRP Plates

  • Matsumoto, Risa;Komoto, Takafumi;Ishikawa, Toshiyuki;Hattori, Atsushi;Kawano, Hirotaka
    • International journal of steel structures
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.1284-1296
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    • 2018
  • Carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP), plates bonding repair method is one of the simple repair methods for cracked steel structures. In this study, the influence of width of CFRP plates on bending fatigue life of out-of-plane gusset joint strengthened with CFRP plates was investigated from the experimental and numerical point of view. In the bending fatigue test of cracked out-of-plane gusset joint strengthened with CFRP plates, the effect of width of CFRP plates on crack growth life was clarified experimentally. Namely, it was revealed that the crack growth life becomes larger with increasing the width of CFRP plates. In the numerical approach, the stress intensity factor (SIF) at the surface point of a semi-elliptical surface crack was estimated based on the linear fracture mechanics. Furthermore, the extended fatigue life of cracked out-of-plane gusset joint strengthened with CFRP plates was evaluated by using the estimated SIF at the surface point and the empirical formula of the aspect ratio of semi-elliptical crack. As the results of numerical analysis, the estimated fatigue life of the specimen strengthened with CFRP plates showed the good agreement with the test results.

Research Framework for International Franchising (국제프랜차이징 연구요소 및 연구방향)

  • Kim, Ju-Young;Lim, Young-Kyun;Shim, Jae-Duck
    • Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
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    • v.18 no.4
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    • pp.61-118
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    • 2008
  • The purpose of this research is to construct research framework for international franchising based on existing literature and to identify research components in the framework. Franchise can be defined as management styles that allow franchisee use various management assets of franchisor in order to make or sell product or service. It can be divided into product distribution franchise that is designed to sell products and business format franchise that is designed for running it as business whatever its form is. International franchising can be defined as a way of internationalization of franchisor to foreign country by providing its business format or package to franchisee of host country. International franchising is growing fast for last four decades but academic research on this is quite limited. Especially in Korea, research about international franchising is carried out on by case study format with single case or empirical study format with survey based on domestic franchise theory. Therefore, this paper tries to review existing literature on international franchising research, providing research framework, and then stimulating new research on this field. International franchising research components include motives and environmental factors for decision of expanding to international franchising, entrance modes and development plan for international franchising, contracts and management strategy of international franchising, and various performance measures from different perspectives. First, motives of international franchising are fee collection from franchisee. Also it provides easier way to expanding to foreign country. The other motives including increase total sales volume, occupying better strategic position, getting quality resources, and improving efficiency. Environmental factors that facilitating international franchising encompasses economic condition, trend, and legal or political factors in host and/or home countries. In addition, control power and risk management capability of franchisor plays critical role in successful franchising contract. Final decision to enter foreign country via franchising is determined by numerous factors like history, size, growth, competitiveness, management system, bonding capability, industry characteristics of franchisor. After deciding to enter into foreign country, franchisor needs to set entrance modes of international franchising. Within contractual mode, there are master franchising and area developing franchising, licensing, direct franchising, and joint venture. Theories about entrance mode selection contain concepts of efficiency, knowledge-based approach, competence-based approach, agent theory, and governance cost. The next step after entrance decision is operation strategy. Operation strategy starts with selecting a target city and a target country for franchising. In order to finding, screening targets, franchisor needs to collect information about candidates. Critical information includes brand patent, commercial laws, regulations, market conditions, country risk, and industry analysis. After selecting a target city in target country, franchisor needs to select franchisee, in other word, partner. The first important criteria for selecting partners are financial credibility and capability, possession of real estate. And cultural similarity and knowledge about franchisor and/or home country are also recognized as critical criteria. The most important element in operating strategy is legal document between franchisor and franchisee with home and host countries. Terms and conditions in legal documents give objective information about characteristics of franchising agreement for academic research. Legal documents have definitions of terminology, territory and exclusivity, agreement of term, initial fee, continuing fees, clearing currency, and rights about sub-franchising. Also, legal documents could have terms about softer elements like training program and operation manual. And harder elements like law competent court and terms of expiration. Next element in operating strategy is about product and service. Especially for business format franchising, product/service deliverable, benefit communicators, system identifiers (architectural features), and format facilitators are listed for product/service strategic elements. Another important decision on product/service is standardization vs. customization. The rationale behind standardization is cost reduction, efficiency, consistency, image congruence, brand awareness, and competitiveness on price. Also standardization enables large scale R&D and innovative change in management style. Another element in operating strategy is control management. The simple way to control franchise contract is relying on legal terms, contractual control system. There are other control systems, administrative control system and ethical control system. Contractual control system is a coercive source of power, but franchisor usually doesn't want to use legal power since it doesn't help to build up positive relationship. Instead, self-regulation is widely used. Administrative control system uses control mechanism from ordinary work relationship. Its main component is supporting activities to franchisee and communication method. For example, franchisor provides advertising, training, manual, and delivery, then franchisee follows franchisor's direction. Another component is building franchisor's brand power. The last research element is performance factor of international franchising. Performance elements can be divided into franchisor's performance and franchisee's performance. The conceptual performance measures of franchisor are simple but not easy to obtain objectively. They are profit, sale, cost, experience, and brand power. The performance measures of franchisee are mostly about benefits of host country. They contain small business development, promotion of employment, introduction of new business model, and level up technology status. There are indirect benefits, like increase of tax, refinement of corporate citizenship, regional economic clustering, and improvement of international balance. In addition to those, host country gets socio-cultural change other than economic effects. It includes demographic change, social trend, customer value change, social communication, and social globalization. Sometimes it is called as westernization or McDonaldization of society. In addition, the paper reviews on theories that have been frequently applied to international franchising research, such as agent theory, resource-based view, transaction cost theory, organizational learning theory, and international expansion theories. Resource based theory is used in strategic decision based on resources, like decision about entrance and cooperation depending on resources of franchisee and franchisor. Transaction cost theory can be applied in determination of mutual trust or satisfaction of franchising players. Agent theory tries to explain strategic decision for reducing problem caused by utilizing agent, for example research on control system in franchising agreements. Organizational Learning theory is relatively new in franchising research. It assumes organization tries to maximize performance and learning of organization. In addition, Internalization theory advocates strategic decision of direct investment for removing inefficiency of market transaction and is applied in research on terms of contract. And oligopolistic competition theory is used to explain various entry modes for international expansion. Competency theory support strategic decision of utilizing key competitive advantage. Furthermore, research methodologies including qualitative and quantitative methodologies are suggested for more rigorous international franchising research. Quantitative research needs more real data other than survey data which is usually respondent's judgment. In order to verify theory more rigorously, research based on real data is essential. However, real quantitative data is quite hard to get. The qualitative research other than single case study is also highly recommended. Since international franchising has limited number of applications, scientific research based on grounded theory and ethnography study can be used. Scientific case study is differentiated with single case study on its data collection method and analysis method. The key concept is triangulation in measurement, logical coding and comparison. Finally, it provides overall research direction for international franchising after summarizing research trend in Korea. International franchising research in Korea has two different types, one is for studying Korean franchisor going overseas and the other is for Korean franchisee of foreign franchisor. Among research on Korean franchisor, two common patterns are observed. First of all, they usually deal with success story of one franchisor. The other common pattern is that they focus on same industry and country. Therefore, international franchise research needs to extend their focus to broader subjects with scientific research methodology as well as development of new theory.

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Assessment for the Comparability between Korean Ministry of Environment Standard and ISO Standard for the Determination of Heavy Metals in Soil (토양 중금속 함량 측정에 대한 토양오염공정시험기준과 국제표준간의 적합성 평가)

  • Shin, Gun-Hwan;Lee, Goon-Teak;Lee, Won-Seok;Kim, Ji-In;Kim, Bo-Kyong;Park, Hyun-Jeong
    • Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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    • v.17 no.3
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    • pp.1-9
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    • 2012
  • According to the agreement on WTO/TBT, we are under the situation to adopt international standard (ISO standard) as a national standard if it exists. However, in case of environmental area, it is a domestic legal obligation to use Korean environmental standard method(KESM) for analyzing various contaminants. Therefore it is necessary to assess the comparability between KEM and ISO standard prior to apply ISO standard to soil conservation law in Korea. The main purpose of this study is to assess the comparability of both methods for analyzing heavy metals in soil. We looked over various aspects like pre-treatment, calibration curve range, detection wavelength, soil organic matter content and so on. Apparently, the procedure of both methods is almost same. However in details, both methods are different in stationary time before aqua-regia extraction using reflux system, calibration curve range for Cu, Pb, Ni and measuring wavelength for Pb. According to the results of comparison test, the results were significantly different when the different calibration range was used. In case that all the extracts independent of methods were reanalyzed with the same calibration range of each method, both methods showed statistically same results. Other conditions like different stationary time, measuring wavelength of AAS and soil organic matter content did not have any influence on the analytical result. Therefore, we suggest to extend the calibration curve range to 0~8 mg/L which is used in KS I ISO standard(Korean standard related with environment which is translation version of ISO standard without any technical change). In case of $Cr^{6+}$, the results showed no significant differences between two methods even though the pretreatment, instrumentation and other analysis conditions were different. In addition to UV/Visble spectrometry of KESM for soil contamination, we suggest to adopt ion chromatography of ISO 15192(US EPA method 7199) for analyzing $Cr^{6+}$ with the consideration of laboratory work efficiency.

Global Project Finance Trends and Commercial Risk Analysis (글로벌 프로젝트 파이낸스 최근 동향 및 상업위험 분석)

  • Kim, Sang Man
    • THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE & LAW REVIEW
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    • v.61
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    • pp.273-302
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    • 2014
  • Project finance ("PF") is a method of raising long-term debt financing based on lending against the cash flow generated by the project alone. Project finance is a nonrecourse or limited recourse financing structure against the sponsors(or the investors). The debt terms in a project finance are not based on the creditor's credit support or on the value of the assets of the project. Lenders rely on the future cash flow to be generated by the project for debt repayment and interest, rather than the value of the project or the credit ratings of the sponsors. The non-recourse or limited recourse financing usually prompt potential project finance lenders to assess carefully all possible risks that might arise in a project to ensure that those risks are mitigated and controlled. In this respect, project finance is a opposite financing method of corporate finance. Project finance has rapidly grown over the last 20 years due to the worldwide process of privatization of public sector and development of natural resources. Global project finance volume reached the record USD 406.5 billion in 2011. In 2012, however, Global project finance volume dropped 6% to USD 382.3 billion. Infrastructure overtook Energy to lead all sectors with USD 113.6 billion. It is generally recognized that there are more and higher risks in project finance compared with corporate finance. Project finance is exposed to commercial risks as well as political risks. The main commercial risks are completion risks, environmental risks, operating risks, input supply risks, revenue risks, etc, and the main political risks are currency convertibility and transfer risks, expropriation risks, war and civil disturbance risks, risks of breach of government concession agreement, etc. Completion risks include permits risks, risks relating to the EPC Contractor, construction cost overrun, delay in completion, inadequate performance on completion, etc.

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Key Elements for Standardizing the Estimation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Induced by Remanufactured Products (재제조품의 온실가스배출 저감효과 산정 표준화를 위한 핵심 요소 도출)

  • Nam Seok Kim;Kook Pyo Pae;Jae Hak No;Hong-Yoon Kang;Yong Woo Hwang
    • Resources Recycling
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    • v.33 no.2
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    • pp.62-72
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    • 2024
  • Although the Paris Agreement in 2015 aimed to limit global temperature increases to below 2℃ and eventually to 1.5℃ to address the climate crisis, global temperature continues to rise. Developed countries have proposed a circular economy as a major strategy to tackle this issue. Detailed implementation methods include reusing, remanufacturing, recycling, and energy recovery. Remanufacturing has a greater potential to achieve high added value and carbon neutrality than other resource circulation methods. However, currently, no standardized method for quantitatively evaluating the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction effects of remanufacturing exists. This study compares and analyzes recent research trends since 2020 on the calculation of GHG emission reduction effects from remanufacturing. It also examines international standards for environmental impact assessment, including GHGs and environmental performance labeling systems. This study derives the key factors for standardizing the calculation of the GHG emission reduction effects of remanufactured products.

Analysis of the Durban Climate Summit and Its Implications to Climate Policies of Korea (제17차 유엔 기후변화 더반 당사국 총회의 평가와 정책적 시사점)

  • Park, Siwon
    • Journal of Environmental Policy
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    • v.11 no.3
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    • pp.149-170
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    • 2012
  • The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, ended on December 12, 2011, 36 hours over its schedule, delivering the Durban Package, which consisted of, inter alia, the extension of the period for Kyoto Protocol term and the launch of Ad-hoc working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. Despite the positive progress made in Durban, the future of post-2012 climate regime still seems cloudy. Before the Durban conference, some of Annex I countries with emissions reduction commitment under the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period openly declared their intention not to participate in the second one, reducing the effectiveness of Durban agreement. Parties to the conference have a long list of difficult issues disturbing the materialization of the new legal agreement in 2020 such as level of mitigation targets of individual countries and legal nature of their commitment. Given this uncertainty, the Korean government should reinforce its domestic climate policies rather than settling in the fact that it remains as a non-Annex I county party under the Durban Agreement due to the extension of the Kyoto Protocol period. Domestically, it needs to continue to raise the public awareness for rigorous climate policies to transit its economy to low carbon pathway which reduces the country's dependency on fossil fuel in the long term. It is also important to implement cost effective climate policies to cope with domestic resistance and international competitiveness. Internationally, its priority would be working for trust-building in the on-going negotiation meetings to encourage meaningful participation of all parties.

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