• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.41 no.5 s.116
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• pp.582-599
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• 2006

Due to the growing popularity of mobile information technology, more people, especially in the general public, have access to computerized geospatial information systems for wayfinding tasks or urban navigation. One of the problems with the current services is that, whether the users are exploring or navigating, whether they are travelers who are totally new to a region or long-term residents who have a fair amount of regional knowledge, the same method is applied and the direction are given in the same way. However, spatial knowledge for a given urban region expands in proportion to residency. Urban navigation is highly dependent on cognitive mental images, which is developed through spatial experience and social communication. Thus, the wayfinding service for a regional community can be highly supported, using well-known regional places. This research is to develop the framework for urban navigation within a regional community. The concept of communal ontology is proposed to aid in urban regional navigation. The experimental work was implemented with case study to collect regional landmarks, develop the ontological model and represent it with formal structure. The final product of this study will provide the geographical information of a region to the other agent and be the fundamental information structure for cognitive urban regional navigation.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.40 no.2 s.107
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• pp.153-171
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• 2005

The newly adopted Korea Geodetic Datum (a.k.a. KGD2002) calls for massive reengineering work on geospatial dataset. The main focus of our study is placed on the strategy and system implementations of the required data reengineering with a keen attention to integrated approaches to interoperability, standardization, and database utilization. Our reengineering strategy includes file-to-file, file-to-DB, DB-to-file, and DB-to-DB conversion for the coordinate transformation of KGD2002. In addition to the map formats of existing standards such as DXF and Shapefile, the newly recommended standards such as GML and SVG are also accommodated in our reengineering environment. These four types of standard format may be imported into and exported from spatial database via KGD2002 transformation component. The DB-to-DB conversion, in particular, includes not only intra-database conversion but also inter-database conversion between SDE/Oracle and Oracle Spatial. All these implementations were carried out in multiple computing environments: desktop and the Web. The feasibility test of our system shows that the coordinate differences between Bessel and GRS80 ellipsoid agree with the criteria presented in the existing researches.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-11
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• 2006

Attempts were made to analyze the national policy of soil contamination prevention and management of inactive or abandoned metal (IAM) mines in Korea. This approach focused on legal systems and legislation, remediation technology development, and the arrangement or distribution of budgets pertaining to national policy since the mid 1990's. Prevention of Mining Damage and Recovery Act enacted. Defines the roles, responsibility and budget of the government when recovering mine damages. However, in 2005 there still remains to improve the national policy of soil contamination prevention and management of IAM mines. Analysis of national and industrialized foreign countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands suggest the following improvements: i) arranging distinct regulations between strict and non-strict liability criteria for potentially responsible parties; limiting innocent and non-strict liability depending on the period of incurred mining activity, ii) enhancing participation of local communities by enforcing law and legislation, iii) establishing a national database system of (potentially) IAM contaminated sites based on the Website-Geographic Information System, iv) carrying out site-specific risk assessments and remediation of IAM contaminated sites, v) preparation and distribution of clean-up fund at mine sites adequately, and vi) technology development for the cleaning of IAM contaminated sites; awarding positive incentives of a legal nature for participants applying newly developed technology in IAM mines.