• Land and Housing Review
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.17-36
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• 2023

This research aims to investigate the socio-demographic, financial, and housing statuses of young married couples in Chonsei housing and to analyze the determinants of their residential environment quality and housing expenditure in four districts - Seoul and Gyeonggi-Incheon Area(GIA) of the Seoul Metropolitan Area(SMA), and metropolises and non-metropolises of non-SMA. From the 2020 Korean Housing Survey(KHS), this cross-sectional analysis examined a sample of 691 households, and the findings revealed that most were headed by college-educated, salaried male workers aged 31 years old. While childless dual-earner couples were common in Seoul, single-income families of three were prevalent in non-SMA. The financial status of the couples in Seoul was a lot better than in the other three areas, particularly much higher in Chonsei deposit and total asset value. Further, many lived in a three-bedroom apartment unit sized 60m² and bigger, using a Chonsei loan. Regardless of areas, almost all the households spent a very low portion of their living expenses and income on housing costs. However, dual-earner families positively increased borrowing capacity, which improves the household's financial position that is likely to lead to equity increment in a volatile asset market in the long run. The statistical results indicated that residential environment assessment was influenced by neighborhood quality and housing expenditure was affected by housing size in Seoul, urban amenities in GIA and householder's gender in non-metropolises. Thus, this research proposes that strong measures be considered to mitigate housing inequality embedded in geographical and socio-economic disparities.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.909-930
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• 2022

Although the electricity tariff for each customer class in Korea has an institutional basis which can be linked to cost fluctuations caused by the increase in fuel cost, there is a situation in which it cannot be raised in a timely manner, considering the national economic burden such as inflation. There can be some disagreements about unconditionally raising electricity rates when cost increases occur. It is, however, well known that Korean domestic electricity rates are very low around the world and are in an environment in which rates are not easily adjusted. Moreover, as Korean electricity rates cannot be easily raised due to various factors, domestic electricity rates for each customer class itself have not delivered a desirable price signal for power consumption. Based on historical data such as fuel costs and power production by power source from 2017 to 2020, this study estimated how much power consumption would change if electricity rates were adjusted in 2030 and price signal distortion was resolved. As a result of the estimation, power consumption will be reduced by 9,000 GWh if the current electricity bill is adjusted to a level which can be 100% recovered even with the supply cost alone. This led to a reduction of about 3.82 million CO₂tons of greenhouse gas emissions in the Korean power sector.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.28 no.1D
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• pp.107-117
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• 2008

Private financing is playing an increasing role in public infrastructure construction projects worldwide. However, private investors/operators are exposed to the financial risk of low profitability due to the inaccurate estimation of facility demand, operation income, maintenance costs, etc. From the operator's perspective, a sound and thorough financial feasibility study is required to establish the appropriate capital structure of a project. Operators tend to reduce the equity amount to minimize the level of risk exposure, while creditors persist to raise it, in an attempt to secure a sufficient level of financial involvement from the operators. Therefore, it is important for creditors and operators to reach an agreement for a balanced capital structure that synthetically considers both profitability and repayment capacity. This paper presents an optimal capital structure model for successful private infrastructure investment. This model finds the optimized point where the profitability is balanced with the repayment capacity, with the use of the concept of utility function and multi-objective GA (Generic Algorithm)-based optimization. A case study is presented to show the validity of the model and its verification. The research conclusions provide a proper capital structure for privately-financed infrastructure projects through a proposed multi-objective model.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.25-36
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of fast food intake, choice, and satisfaction on age among 311 people living in the metropolitan area. The frequency of fast food intake was high in the 20s and 30s, and those in the 40s and over 50s were low, showing a significant difference according to age. Costs for fast food purchases mainly ranged from 5,000 won to 7,000 won. Major sources of information on choosing fast food were mainly from friends and the internet in 20s, and mass media from over 30s. Thirty-nine percent of subjects responded that their dietary habits changed after fast food intake, and the most changes was to like spicy food, followed by eating-out times increased. The factors affecting the choice of fast food were mainly easy to eat, followed by time was not influenced and taste, and taste showed significant difference according to age. Among the subjects who were worried about fast food, 30s showed mainly increase in body weight and over 50s had health problem, and a significant difference was observed according to age. For the improvements in fast food intake, subjects answered in nutrition, hygiene and price in order. Fast food brands, services, menus were the most satisfied in 30s, and 40s were the most unsatisfied, and there was a significant difference. In conclusion, the frequency of fast food intake was higher in young people, and the choice of fast food and satisfaction appeared to be significantly influenced by age. Therefore, data are required to recognize and practice a balanced diet by activating studies on the fast food intake of middle-aged and elderly people and understanding consumer changes.

• 한국노년학
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.1043-1061
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to evaluate cost side by type of long term care services economically, and then to discuss the findings and implications for the results of analysis. For this research, primary caregivers that provide care the elderly requiring long term care services sanctioned by National Health Insurance Corporation were drawn and surveyed. Among collected data, data for 422 primary caregivers were used for this study. The subjects used in this study consisted of family caregivers from various settings that give care to the elderly. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, caregiver's household income level is low. Therefore, caregiving families with the elderly are likely to have financial difficulties. Second, under coverage of long term care insurance system, the direct cost caregiving households pay for the elderly is still very high. Third, indirect cost of caregiving households accounted for the larger proportion caregiving costs. Fourth, social cost burden for caregiving the elderly is very high. This cost amount is appropriately equal to household income of caregivers surveyed in the research. Fifth, service use cost of caregiving households is differentiated by type of long term care service. Sixth, direct cost of caregiving households is statistically significantly differentiated by type of long term care service, but is differentiated less than service use cost. Seventh, social indirect cost for caregiving the elderly is statistically significantly differentiated by type of long term care service. Eighth, social cost amounts for the elderly utilizing long term care service is very high, total social cost per capita by types of long term care service tend to converge on average social cost per capita of total service.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.66-73
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• 2023

The construction industry suffers losses due to failures in demand forecasting due to price fluctuations in construction raw materials, increased user costs due to project cost changes, and lack of forecasting system. Accordingly, it is necessary to improve the accuracy of construction raw material price forecasting. This study aims to predict the price of construction raw materials and verify applicability through the improvement of the Data Refactor technique. In order to improve the accuracy of price prediction of construction raw materials, the existing data refactor classification of low and high frequency and ARIMAX utilization method was improved to frequency-oriented and ARIMA method utilization, so that short-term (3 months in the future) six items such as construction raw materials lumber and cement were improved. ), mid-term (6 months in the future), and long-term (12 months in the future) price forecasts. As a result of the analysis, the predicted value based on the improved Data Refactor technique reduced the error and expanded the variability. Therefore, it is expected that the budget can be managed effectively by predicting the price of construction raw materials more accurately through the Data Refactor technique proposed in this study.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.56 no.10
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• pp.641-653
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• 2023

As climate change and urbanization are causing unprecedented natural disasters in urban areas, it is crucial to have urban flood predictions with high fidelity and accuracy. However, conventional physically- and deep learning-based urban flood modeling methods have limitations that require a lot of computer resources or data for high-resolution flooding analysis. In this study, we propose and implement a method for improving the spatial resolution of urban flood analysis using a deep learning based super-resolution technique. The proposed approach converts low-resolution flood maps by physically based modeling into the high-resolution using a super-resolution deep learning model trained by high-resolution modeling data. When applied to two cases of retrospective flood analysis at part of City of Portland, Oregon, U.S., the results of the 4-m resolution physical simulation were successfully converted into 1-m resolution flood maps through super-resolution. High structural similarity between the super-solution image and the high-resolution original was found. The results show promising image quality loss within an acceptable limit of 22.80 dB (PSNR) and 0.73 (SSIM). The proposed super-resolution method can provide efficient model training with a limited number of flood scenarios, significantly reducing data acquisition efforts and computational costs.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.39 no.12
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• pp.61-73
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• 2023

Suction buckets are feasible options for offshore foundations to support subsea structures in deep water, enabling suction-induced installation by pumps. Recently, hybrid suction bucket foundations that combine single or multiple suction buckets with a mat foundation have been considered. The foundations effectively increase the load capacity while reducing construction costs. However, there is still insufficient experimental validation of hybrid suction bucket foundations regarding their bearing capacity. Furthermore, research on the horizontal load capacity under low vertical and moment loads is inadequate. In this study, we investigate the feasibility of using a hybrid suction bucket foundation for subsea installations in clay. We considered two types of hybrid suction bucket foundations: a circular mat with a single suction bucket and a square mat with multiple buckets. Centrifuge tests were performed to understand the hybrid suction bucket foundation characteristics under horizontal loads and their corresponding bearing capacity. Particularly, we verified the effect of the mat foundation and bucket embedment depth on the horizontal bearing mechanism and capacities. Results confirmed that the hybrid suction bucket foundation outperforms the single suction bucket.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.111-118
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• 2024

An in-structure response spectrum (ISRS) is required to evaluate the seismic performance of a nuclear power plant (NPP). However, when a new ISRS is required because of the change in the unique spectrum of an NPP site, considerable costs such as seismic response re-analyses are incurred. This study provides several approaches to generate approximate methods for ISRS scaling, which do not require seismic response re-analyses. The ISRSs derived using these approaches are compared to the original ISRS. The effect of the ISRS of the approximate method on the seismic response and seismic performance of one of the main systems of an NPP is analyzed. The ISRS scaling approximation methods presented in this study produce ISRSs that are relatively similar at low frequencies; however, the similarity decreases at high frequencies. The effect of the ISRS scaling approximate method on the calculation accuracy of the seismic response/seismic performance of the system is determined according to the degree of similarity in the calculation of the system's essential mode responses for the method.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.58-64
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• 2024

Approximately 250 marine oil spill accidents have occurred in Korea, with profound impact on local communities and the environment. The restoration process necessitates significant resources and costs to return affected areas to their pre-accident state. In accordance with the polluter pays principle, compensation is demanded from polluter, as stipulated in both international conventions and national laws. Consequently, investigations are conducted to determine civil and criminal liability. As the importance of investigation actors in oil spill accidents increases, standards such as CEN 15522-2 and ASTM D 3248 are employed to determine the similarity between the spilled oil and the oil of the suspected ship. Among these standards, CEN 15522-2, the most actively used European standard, underwent its third revision and is now known as EN 15522-2, as of 2023. This study used EN 15522-2 to analyze samples from marine oil spill accidents that occurred in Korea. The results indicated that, considering the characteristics of domestic spills where light fuel oil spills account for more than 40%, the application of EN 15522-2, which includes low-boiling point substances such as Adamantanes, was confirmed to be highly effective.