Author(s): Sang-Hoon Lee; Hong-Kyu Ahn
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Keywords: No Keywords
Abstract: In recent years, river environment restoration has become a significant issue in South Korea due to changes in paradigm of river management. As a result of the flood control-oriented river restoration projects, lower and upper parts of the rivers had excessive retaining walls and concrete block products, which had adverse effects on river ecosystems and damage to river views although ensuring safety due to flood control. In particular, technologies using concretes have negative effects on river ecosystems due to continuous release of toxic substances such as heavy metals (Fe, Ni, Cd, and Cr etc. ) and alkali (around pH 12) to the rivers. Due to this problem, a number of developments of river restoration technologies and applications of technologies considering flood control and river ecosystems have been applied in river sites. Nonetheless, few technologies have been verified in terms of hydraulic stability and river conditions so that river managers could not trust on those technologies. In particular, most technologies used in sites lacked scientific verification and the results of technological performance are only dependent on developer's experience values without any reliability on the developed technologies. In addition, since technologies that are applicable to changes in river environments as a result of sudden changes in weathers such as an increase in rainfalls and heavy rains due to abnormal climates are underdeveloped, constant development of technologies is required.
Year: 2018