• Title/Summary/Keyword: catastrophe

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Managing the Vulnerability of Megacities in North America and Europe to Seismic Hazards

  • Waugh, William L.
    • Fire Science and Engineering
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    • v.15 no.2
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    • pp.20-30
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    • 2001
  • The science and technology of seismic hazard mitigation are increasingly being shared among scientists and policy makers around the world. Administrative expertise is also being shared. While there is still tremendous unevenness in technical and administrative capacities and resources, a global community of emergency managers is developing and there is a globalization of expertise. Hazards are better understood, tools for risk assessment are improving, techniques for hazard mitigation are being perfected, and communities and states are implementing more comprehensive disaster preparedness, response, and recovery programs. Priorities are also emerging and hazard mitigation has emerged as the priority of choice in North America and Europe. An increasingly important component of hazard mitigation is resilience, in terms of increased capacities for disaster mitigation and recovery at the community and even individual levels. Each year, more is known about the locations and natures of seismic hazards, although there are still unknown and poorly understood fault lines and limited understanding of related disasters such as tsunamis and landslides. More is known about the impact of earthquakes on the built environment, although nature still provides surprises to confound man's best extorts to reduce risk. More is known about human nature and how people respond to uncertain risk and when confronted by certain catastrophe. However, despite the increased understanding of seismic phenomena and how to protect people and property, there is much that needs to be done to reduce the risk, particularly in major metropolitan areas.

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The Potential of Satellite SAR Imagery for Mapping of Flood Inundation

  • Lee, Kyu-Sung;Hong, Chang-Hee;Kim, Yoon-Hyoung
    • Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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    • 1998.09a
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    • pp.128-133
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    • 1998
  • To assess the flood damages and to provide necessary information for preventing future catastrophe, it is necessary to appraise the inundated area with more accurate and rapid manner. This study attempts to evaluate the potential of satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data for mapping of flood inundated area in southern part of Korea. JERS L-band SAR data obtained during the summer of 1997 were used to delineate the inundated areas. In addition, Landsat TM data were also used for analyzing the land cover condition before the flooding. Once the two data sets were co-registered, each data was separately classified. The water surface areas extracted from the SAR data and the land cover map generated using the TM data were overlaid to determine the flood inundated areas. Although manual interpretation of water surfaces from the SAR image seems rather simple, the computer classification of water body requires clear understanding of radar backscattering behavior on the earth's surfaces. It was found that some surface features, such as rice fields, runaway, and tidal flat, have very similar radar backscatter to water surface. Even though satellite SAR data have a great advantage over optical remote sensor data for obtaining imagery on time and would provide valuable information to analyze flood, it should be cautious to separate the exact areas of flood inundation from the similar features.

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A Study on Evaluation of Development Priority Order & Scheme for Redevelopment Target Area in Pusan Port (부산항 재개발 대상지의 개발우선순위 평가 및 개발방안에 관한 연구)

  • 여기태;박창호;김진구
    • Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.61-83
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    • 2002
  • Korea has designated 28 trade ports and 22 coastal ports under the Ports Act. If fishery ports and small inlets are counted, the number amounts to hundreds of ports. However, untimely and inefficient maintenance and repair works face Korean ports with functional loss, decreasing efficiency, and even catastrophe. Thus, further examinations on the maintenance or redevelopment of forts in Korea are urgent. Since the Korean War and the higher economic growth period in the 1970s, Busan Port has developed in a variety of ways, according to the necessity of social conditions at any given time, without any development Philosophy or systematic long-term master plan. As a result, ports and coastal industrial facilities have rushed to gather around the present North Busan Port, which has taken on mixed functions between ports and cities, adversely affecting several of their interactions. To resolve these circumstances, several redevelopment schemes were suggested for centering the old zone in the Busan Port interim. However, comprehensive evaluation and redevelopment schemes combining functions of both ports and cities, and effectively utilizing coastal zones have never been presented. In this respect, this study sets the priority order of the extracted unit project. This study analyzes the existing functions and facilities of Busan Port, extracting facility zones through redevelopment which is certain to fail or to decrease in efficiency. furthermore, this study presents status and development directions of specified redevelopment unit projects of higher priority order, and pursues the integrated plan of efficiency for Busan Port.

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Analysis of Typhoon Vulnerability According to Quantitative Loss Data of Typhoon Maemi (태풍 매미의 피해 데이터 기반 국내 태풍 취약성 분석에 관한 연구)

  • Ahn, Sung-Jin;Kim, Tae-Hui;Kim, Ji-Myong
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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    • 2019.05a
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    • pp.125-126
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    • 2019
  • This study aims to recognize damage indicators of typhoon and to develop damage function's indicators, using information derived from the actual loss of typhoon Maemi. As typhoons engender significant financial damage all over the world, governments and insurance companies, local or global, develop hurricane risk assessment models and use it in quantifying, avoiding, mitigating, or transferring the risks. For the reason, it is crucial to understand the importance of the risk assessment model for typhoons, and the importance of reflecting local vulnerabilities for more advanced evaluation. Although much previous research on the economic losses associated with natural disasters has identified the risk indicators that are indispensable, more comprehensive research addressing the relationship between vulnerability and economic loss are still called for. Hence this study utilizes and analyzes the actual loss record of the typhoon Maemi provided by insurance companies to fill such gaps. In this study, natural disaster indicators and basic building information indicators are used in order to generate the vulnerability functions; and the results and indicators suggest a practical approach to create the vulnerability functions for insurance companies and administrative tasks, while reflecting the financial loss and local vulnerability of the actual buildings.

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News Focus - Today and Tomorrow of the Korea-made NPP, SMART (뉴스초점 - 한국 토종 원자로 'SMART"의 오늘과 내일)

  • Kim, Hak-Roh
    • Journal of the Korean Professional Engineers Association
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    • v.44 no.6
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    • pp.40-44
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    • 2011
  • Nuclear energy in Korea began in 1958, when the Korea's atomic energy act was formulated and the relevant organizations were founded. Since then, notwithstanding the two catastrophe like TMI and Chernobyl accident, Korea made a wise decision to expand the peaceful uses of the nuclear energy as well as to localize the essential nuclear design technology of fuel and nuclear steam supply system. This decision resulted in the success of export of nuclear power plants as well as research reactor in 2010s. The Korea's nuclear policy, which well utilized 'international crisis in nuclear business' as 'opportunity of Korea to get. nuclear technology', is believed nice policy as a role model of nuclear new-comer countries. Based upon the success story of localization of nuclear technology, Korea had an eye for a niche market, which was a basis of development of SMART, Korea-made integral PWR. The operation of a SMART plant can sufficiently provide not only electricity but also fresh water for 100,000 residents. Last two years, Korea's nuclear industry team led by the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute completed the standard design of SMART and applied to the Korea's regulatory body for standard design approval. Now the Korea's licensing authority is reviewing the design with the relevant documents, and the design team is doing its best to realize its hope to get the approval by the end of this year. From next year, the SMART business including construction and export will be explored by the KEPCO consortium.

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Wheat Blast in Bangladesh: The Current Situation and Future Impacts

  • Islam, M. Tofazzal;Kim, Kwang-Hyung;Choi, Jaehyuk
    • The Plant Pathology Journal
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    • v.35 no.1
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    • pp.1-10
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    • 2019
  • Wheat blast occurred in Bangladesh for the first time in Asia in 2016. It is caused by a fungal pathogen, Magnaporthe oryzae Triticum (MoT) pathotype. In this review, we focused on the current status of the wheat blast in regard to host, pathogen, and environment. Despite the many efforts to control the disease, it expanded to neighboring regions including India, the world's second largest wheat producer. However, the disease occurrence has definitely decreased in quantity, because of many farmers chose to grow alternate crops according to the government's directions. Bangladesh government planned to introduce blast resistant cultivars but knowledges about genetics of resistance is limited. The genome analyses of the pathogen population revealed that the isolates caused wheat blast in Bangladesh are genetically close to a South American lineage of Magnaporthe oryzae. Understanding the genomes of virulent strains would be important to find target resistance genes for wheat breeding. Although the drier winter weather in Bangladesh was not favorable for development of wheat blast before, recent global warming and climate change are posing an increasing risk of disease development. Bangladesh outbreak in 2016 was likely to be facilitated by an extraordinary warm and humid weather in the affected districts before the harvest season. Coordinated international collaboration and steady financial supports are needed to mitigate the fearsome wheat blast in South Asia before it becomes a catastrophe.

The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Stock Market Returns in Emerging Economies: Empirical Evidence from Panel Data

  • GNAHE, Franck Edouard;ASHRAF, Junaid;HUANG, Fei-Ming
    • The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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    • v.9 no.4
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    • pp.191-196
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    • 2022
  • From several socioeconomic perspectives, the present health crisis can be connected to the 2008 financial and economic catastrophe. Governments worldwide are working hard to keep the markets in check, as evidence suggests that the health crisis may soon become an economic crisis. This paper aims to analyze the effect of COVID-19 on the selected stock market. Using a panel of daily COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths and the stock market from 22 developing countries, we exploit an oil price as a shock to the stock market and examine the effect of COVID-19 on the slowdown of the stock market. We find a negative and significant impact of COVID-19 on the stock market in the first stage till April. However, there is no net influence on the stock market downturn when we extend the period. However, further study suggests that the outbreak's negative influence on the selected stock market has diminished and has begun to decline as of mid-April. As a result of the COVID-19 effect on the chosen stock, our findings imply that the government in the chosen market should consider a regulatory mechanism to reduce the stock market slowdown induced by the pandemic COVID-19.

A Study on the Failure Characteristic of Excavation Puddle by LPG Explosion using AUTODYN (LPG 폭발로 인한 건설현장 굴착웅덩이의 구조물 파손 특성에 관한 연구)

  • Kim, Eui Soo
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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    • v.26 no.5
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    • pp.58-65
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    • 2022
  • Gas explosion accidents could cause a catastrophe. we need specialized and systematic accident investigation techniques to shed light on the cause and prevent similar accidents. In this study, we had performed LPG explosion simulation using AUTODYN which is the commercial explosion program and predicted the damage characteristics of the structures by LNG explosive power. In the first step, we could get LPG's physical and chemical explosion properties by calculation using TNT equivalency method. And then, by applying TNT equivalency value about the explosion limit concentration of LPG on the 2D-AUTODYN simulation, we could get the explosion pressure wave profiles (explosion pressure, explosion velocity, etc.). In the last step, we performed LPG explosion simulation by applying to the explosion pressure wave profiles as the input data on the 3D-AUTODYN simulation. As a result, we had performed analyzing of the explosion characteristics of LPG in accordance with concentration through the 3D-AUTODYN simulation in terms of the explosion pressure behavior and structure destruction and damage behavior. The analyses showed that the generated stresses of the structures were lower than the compressive strengths in cases 1(two lane) and 2(four lane), while the generated stress in case 3(six lane) was 8.68e3 kPa, which exceeded the compressive strength of 5.89e3 kPa.

Damage evaluation of masonry buildings during Kahramanmaraş (Türkiye) earthquakes on February 06, 2023

  • Ercan Isik;Aydin Buyuksarac;Fatih Avcil;Enes Arkan;M.Cihan Aydin;Ali Emre Ulu
    • Earthquakes and Structures
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    • v.25 no.3
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    • pp.209-221
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    • 2023
  • The Mw=7.7 (Pazarcık-Kahramanmaraş) and Mw=7.6 (Elbistan-Kahramanmaraş) earthquakes that occurred in Türkiye on 06.02.2023 with 9 hours' intervals, caused great losses of life and property as the biggest catastrophe in the instrumental period. The earthquakes affecting an area of 14% of the country were enormous and caused a great deal of loss of life and damage. Numerous buildings have collapsed or damaged at different levels, both in the city centers and in rural areas. Within the scope of this study, masonry structure damage built from different types of materials in the earthquake region was taken into consideration. In this study, the damage and causes of such masonry structures that do not generally receive engineering services were examined and explained in detail. Insufficient interlocking between wall-wall and wall-roof, inadequate masonry, lack of horizontal and vertical bond beams, usage of low-strength materials, poor workmanship, and heavy earthen roof are commonly caused to structural damages. Separation at the corner point and out-of-plane mechanism in structural walls, and heavy earthen roof damages are common types of damage in masonry structures.

Anticancer Drugs at Low Concentrations Upregulate the Activity of Natural Killer Cell

  • Hyeokjin Kwon;Myeongguk Jeong;Yeeun Kim;Go-Eun Choi
    • Biomedical Science Letters
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    • v.29 no.3
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    • pp.178-183
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    • 2023
  • Natural killer (NK) cells are innate cytotoxic lymphoid cells that actively prevent neoplastic development, growth, and metastatic dissemination in a process called cancer immunosurveillance. Regulation of the cytotoxic activity of NK cells relies on integrated interactions between inhibitory receptors and numerous activating receptors that act in tandem to eliminate tumor cells efficiently. Conventional chemotherapy is designed to produce an anti-proliferative or cytotoxic effect on early tumor cell division. Therapies designed to kill cancer cells and simultaneously maintain host anti-tumor immunity are attractive strategies for controlling tumor growth. Depending on the drug and dose used, several chemotherapeutic agents cause DNA damage and cancer cell death through apoptosis, immunogenic cell death, or other forms of non-killing (i.e., mitotic catastrophe, senescence, autophagy). Among stress-induced immunostimulatory proteins, changes in the expression levels of NK cell activating and inhibitory ligands and tumor cell death receptors play an important role in the detection and elimination by innate immune effectors including NK cells. Therefore, we will address how these cytotoxic lymphocytes sense and respond to high and low concentrations of drug-induced stress to the drug cisplatin, among the various types of drugs that contribute to their anticancer activity.