This study focused on quantifying fugitive dust levels around rural village adjacent near a stone quarry, specifically examining the influence of quarry operations and gravel transport vehicles on road dust dispersion. For this purpose, fugitive dust concentration monitoring was conducted to understand the impact of gravel transport vehicles operating through the quarry area on the generation of road dust. Gravimetric analysis indicated substantial increases in Total Suspended Particulate (TSP) concentration (5.8 times), PM-10 (3.6 times), and PM-2.5 (2.0 times) during quarry operations on the quarry transport road. Real-time monitoring during dump truck operation revealed average dust concentrations of TSP 566.8 μg/m³, PM-10 174.8 μg/m³, and PM-2.5 55.3 μg/m. This indicates a significant increase compared to non-operation periods, with TSP concentration rising by 5.8 times, PM-10 concentration by 3.6 times, and PM-2.5 concentration by 2.0 times. Significantly elevated dust levels were observed at the village entrance road and quarry transport road during quarry operations, with PM-10 exceeding regulatory limits by 2.2 times and PM-2.5 exceeding limits by 1.9 times on the quarry transport road. Especially, particles with a diameter greater than 10 μm exhibited a meaningful increase during dump truck transportation. Considering these findings, the study recommends implementing dust mitigation measures, including the introduction of dust barriers, screens, and wheel washing facilities for quarry-bound dump trucks.
Agricultural reservoirs play a crucial role in rural areas, providing essential water resources for agriculture. However, collapses or overfilling of reservoirs can lead to significant damages to both property and lives. Unfortunately, the safety of agricultural reservoirs is often uncertain due to aging infrastructure and lack of comprehensive safety management systems. Additionally, the escalating severity of climate change exacerbates these risks, because of extreme weather events. This study proposes a business model for a flood damage management platform tailored to rural areas to predict downstream flooding caused by agricultural reservoirs and to integrate comprehensive reservoir safety management. It aims to predict more accurate downstream flood damage using improved methods based on previous studies. The proposed business model presents strategies for providing improved downstream flood damage prediction services, and identifies potential customers and service supply strategies for the flood damage management platform. Finally, it presents an economic analysis of the proposed business model and strategies for further revenue generation.
This study investigated and analyzed the landscape conservation activity promotion process targeting the ‘Alassiasdeuli Community Farming Association Corporation’, which is carrying out continuous rural landscape conservation activities led by local residents in the area of Yeohang Mountain, Yeohang-myeon, Haman-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do. Through this, the factors necessary to promote rural landscape conservation activities led by residents were identified, and implications necessary for rural landscape conservation activities led by residents were derived. The first factor that allowed Alassiasdeuli to pursue resident-led rural landscape conservation activities was the fact that an economically stable foundation was established before pursuing conservation activities. Rural landscape conservation activities are carried out based on continuous agricultural activities, and agriculture is closely related to the economic aspect. Accordingly, Alassiasdeuli had a small but regular income from the package business, and was able to carry out various rural landscape conservation activities based on this. Second, within the community, a sense of purpose for rural landscape conservation was shared as a common value. It started with common values that were in line with rural landscape conservation, such as an economic community based on agriculture, indigenous seed conservation, and eco-friendly agriculture, and later, awareness of traditional agriculture and rural landscape conservation was gradually established through members' continued empowerment and related experiences. It has been done. Third, various connections and cooperative relationships were established with residents, related organizations, and administration. We established cooperative relationships by recruiting local organizations and residents as active participants beyond program participation, and exchanged information and expanded the scope of activities by establishing networks with organizations such as the ‘Gyeongnam Darang-Non Network’. In addition, through connection with administration, we experienced various projects and ensured the sustainability of activities through support. Fourth, there was a keyman who could organize activities and control the scale of support projects, taking into account the awareness and capabilities of members. In particular, it is thought that this was possible because the Secretary General was based on building a relationship of trust with residents before Alassiasdeuli was formed. Therefore, in order for resident-led rural landscape conservation activities to be continuously carried out, an organization must be formed centered on farmers, and the economic sustainability of the organization, sharing of common values, and trust relationships among members are the basis, and the Sustainable activities can be promoted through various cooperative relationships between residents, organizations, and administration.
The Facility Modernization Policy for Improvement of Fruits Quality was implemented to improve the competitiveness of the domestic fruit tree sector, and as a result of analyzing samples of participating and non-participating farmers, it is judged to have contributed to the improvement of high-quality fruit production. As a result of analysis using the propensity score matching method, it was found that the Facility Modernization Policy for apple farms contributed to the improvement of fruit quality such as sweetness and high-quality product ratio. In addition, the fruit tree high-quality facility modernization project was found to reduce working hours by about 30 hours per 10a. In the case of grapes, it contributed to quality improvement, including increased sugar content, and reduced working hours by about 15.5 hours per 10a. This study has a limitation in that the number of samples subject to the survey is not large enough, and because of this, it appears that no statistically significant differences in performance variables such as production per unit area and management costs per unit area were found between participating and non-participating farms.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of an agriculture and rural development ODA project in southern Nepal's Terai region to improve food security, and to suggest appropriate project approaches to improve food security. The subject of the analysis is the KOICA-funded 'Inclusive Rural Development project', and a framework for analyzing food security was established based on the FAO's four pillars of food security, and indicators were proposed to measure the food security of project farmers. The data for this study were obtained from a survey of project beneficiary farmers and their control group, and the effects of the project on food security were measured using a a t-test analysis, difference-in-difference analysis, propensity score matching-linear regression combined model (PSM-OLS) and a propensity score matching-difference-in-difference combined model(PSM-DID). The results showed that, in general, the ODA project treatment group had significant improvements in each of the four pillars of food security (food availability, access, utilization, and stability). In addition, cooperative membership had a positive impact on food security improvements, and there were also differences in outcomes among different ethnic groups in the Terai region. The implications of this study are that the Korean government's ODA policy should set aside the food security sector and incorporate food security indicators to contribute to the improvement of food security in ODA partner countries, and that agricultural and rural development ODA projects should include food security indicators as performance indicators in their pre-planning to contribute to securing food security for vulnerable groups as food insecurity is higher among vulnerable groups.
This study aimed to resolve issues in performance monitoring of the ecological sector of the Agricultural Environment Conservation Program through a comparative study of domestic ecological monitoring cases and to identify suitable performance monitoring methods for the project. To achieve this objective, current performance monitoring of the Agricultural Environment Conservation Program was compared and analyzed with domestic ecological monitoring cases to examine their applicability. Research results indicate that domestic ecological monitoring covers a wide range, making it difficult to diagnose the ecological environment at the village level. Therefore, it seems challenging to use these data for evaluating the performance of residents' activities. To accurately assess performances of participating villages in the project, on-site monitoring of the target areas is essential. For this purpose, efforts should be focused on strengthening on-site monitoring through the establishment of collaborative systems. However, domestic ecological monitoring can be utilized for long-term performance monitoring in the Agricultural Environment Conservation Program. By extracting necessary data on agricultural areas through geographic information and particularly by utilizing survey results according to the 'cultivated land ecosystem' type, long-term performance of the project could be evaluated. Accordingly, this study can serve as foundational research for establishing an ecological performance monitoring plan and system suited to the project.
This study developed the procedure and method for the accuracy assessment of unmanned boat survey data, based on the reservoir water depth data of Misan Reservoir, measured by the manned and unmanned boats in 2009 by Korea Rural Community Corporation. In the first step, this study devised the method to extract the contour map of NGIS data in AutoCAD to generate easily the reservoir boundary map used to set the survey range of reservoir water depth and to test the survey accuracy. The surveyed data coordinate systems of the manned and the unmanned boat were also unified by using ArcGIS for the standards of accuracy assessment. In the accuracy assessment, the spatial correlation coefficient of the grid maps of the two measurement results was 0.95, showing high pattern similarity, although the average error was high at 78cm. To analyze in more detail assessment, this study generated randomly the 3,250m transverse profile route (PR), and then extracted grid values of water depth on the PR. In the results of analysis to the extracted depth data on PR, the error average difference of the unmanned boat measurements was 73.18cm and the standard deviation of the error was 55cm compared to the manned boat. This study set these values as the standard for the correction value by average shift and noise removal of the unmanned boat measurement data. By correcting the unmanned boat measurements with these values, this study has high accuracy results, the reservoir water depth and surface area curve with R2 = 0.97 and the water depth and storage volume curve with R2 = 0.999.
