Analyze

South Korea

Misria

Environmental harm and the safety are often the key categories and concepts used when citizens and activists have advocated for changes to US military infrastructure in South Korea. By Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek South Korea, the environmental costs of US military infrastructures often call on the citizens who live near the bases. In this below a new concrete wall built by the US military had blocked the natural water flow, leading to flooding just outside the base during heavy rainfall. Formally all environmental concerns are mediated through a clause called Known Imminent Substantial Endangerment Clause which asks that citizens must prove bodily harm has been inflicted due to environmental harms caused by the US military in order to receive redress. The US military often chooses to ignore claims of US military infrastructure effecting the daily lives of citizens who live near the occupation as the local governments and lawyers are often hesitant to approach the US military about grievances due to the financial support the city receives for hosting US military infrastructure. While environmental protections exist, when they are used and how they are used are often dictated by the US military who are not lawfully accountable for the citizen's livelihoods or concerns with US military infrastructure. In the case of this flooding incident, an activist organization was able to pressure the local government to make a complaint. It resulted in the construction of a drainage system which sits outside of the US military base and inside the property of a local citizen's land. Because all US military infrastructure technically maintains control over the land 3 past it's actual construction it remains up for debate whether the construction of the drainage system should be seen as a base expansion or not.

Cho, Tony. 2023. "Drainage system for Osan Air Base in reaction to flooding outside its borders." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawaii, Nov 8-11.

What steps does a user need to take to produce analytically sharp or provocative data visualizations with this data resource?

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The UI for the portal is straightforward and easy to use and also doubles as a GIS. Through the advanced search function users can use either the criteria or filter tabs to narrow their searches to specific sites. For example when you narrow down the search to RMP facilities only you can quickly pinpoint all of these facilities on a map of an area to show how burdened an area may be with these types of facilities.

What data visualizations illustrate how this data set can be leveraged to characterize environmental injustice in different sett

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The data can very quickly show you how many facilities a geographical area may have. This can allow users to see how burdened a neighborhood for example may be with specific facilities.

What visualizations can be produced with this data resource and what can they be used to demonstrate?

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One of the only data visualizations this site offers is plotting down pinpoints on a map showing individual facilities. If there is more than one site in a certain geographical area then it will group the sites together and provide a circle for where the sites are contained with the number of sites listed on the circle. This makes this data resource not super flexible in ways it can display information. However this is a helpful visualization as it can quickly show you how many specific facilities a certain location may have

 

You can also generate simple graphs with the data that displays the amounts of certain facilities throughout the state. This is a good tool for tracking all regulated facilities which can help users address Ej on a statewide scale.

What can be demonstrated or interpreted with this data set?

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What this lacks in visualizations it makes up for drastically in easy to use UI and for creating one location for all of the state's facility data. By using its advanced search tool users can quickly find a plethora of data on extremely specific sites. This tool will show when the facilities had their most recent evaluations and whether or not there were violations, rough estimates on onsite stored chemicals, which regulatory programs they are a part of, CalEnviroScreen percentile ranges, and a contact list for facility employees.

How scales (county, regional, neighborhood, census tract) can be seen through this data resource?

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This data resource can scale from the state level down to the census tract in terms of facility locations. For data visuals it groups sites together so you can not get a comprehensive visualization of regulated sites beyond the neighborhood and census tract level.

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The system was built to serve organizations and individuals with humanitarian goals. The system gathers data from report, reviews, and users and compiles it into comprehensible information to help inform decision-making for humanitarian concerns. Portions of the app also focus on education and technical support for field researchers looking to collect large quantities of data.