Search results

The purpose of this paper is to identify various individual factors and combinations thereof that can contribute to truck drivers’ occupational accidents, particularly connected to work performed outside the cab in various work environments.

In total, 74 accidents were analysed through in-depth interviews with truck drivers. These interviews were conducted employing the critical incident technique, and analysed utilising a qualitative content analysis approach.

The contributing factors identified were categorised into 14 categories. In all, 13 of these were grouped into four sections reflecting the drivers’ work outside the cab: “Goods and equipment”, “Loading/unloading area”, “Loading/unloading tasks”, and “Organisation”. A single risk factor was associated with 40 accidents while the other 34 involved combinations of factors.

Although the tasks performed by truck drivers in different countries are probably similar, one limitation might be that all the accidents characterised occurred in one country: Sweden.

The findings reveal that complex combinations of risk factors often contribute to accidents. In addition to the transportation company itself, other stakeholders, such as clients, and designers and manufacturers of technology, may influence the occupational safety of truck drivers. Different stakeholders who could contribute to managerial decision making that is designed to prevent accidents are identified and discussed.

This investigation contributes to an in-depth understanding of the causes of accidents in the transportation industry. The findings are discussed from the perspective of the stakeholders and safety management in an attempt to identify key stakeholders who can improve accident prevention.

The construction collapse is one of the most serious accidents since it has several attributes (e.g. accident type and consequence) and its occurrence involves various kinds of causal factors (e.g. human factors). The impact of causal factors on construction collapse accidents and the interrelationships among causal factors remain poorly explored. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to use association rule mining (ARM) for cause analysis of construction collapse accidents.

An accident analytic framework is developed to determine the accident attributes and causal factors, and then ARM is introduced as the method for data mining. The data are from 620 historical accident records on government websites of China from 2010 to 2020. Through the generated association rules, the impact of causal factors and the interrelationships among causal factors are explored.

Collapse accident is easily caused by human factors, material and machine condition and management factors. Furthermore, the results show a close interrelationship between many causal factors and construction scheme and organization. The earthwork collapse is greatly related to environmental condition and the scaffolding collapse is greatly related to material and machine condition.

This study found relevant knowledge about the key causes for different types of construction collapses. Besides, several suggestions are further provided for construction units to prevent construction collapse accidents.

This study uses data mining methods to extract knowledge about the causes of collapse accidents. The impact of causal factors on various types of construction collapse accidents and the interrelationships among causal factors are explained from historical accident data.

Learning from safety accidents and sharing safety knowledge has become an important part of accident prevention and improving construction safety management. Considering the difficulty of reusing unstructured data in the construction industry, the knowledge in it is difficult to be used directly for safety analysis. The purpose of this paper is to explore the construction of construction safety knowledge representation model and safety accident graph through deep learning methods, extract construction safety knowledge entities through BERT-BiLSTM-CRF model and propose a data management model of data–knowledge–services.

The ontology model of knowledge representation of construction safety accidents is constructed by integrating entity relation and logic evolution. Then, the database of safety incidents in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is established based on the collected construction safety incident reports and related dispute cases. The construction method of construction safety accident knowledge graph is studied, and the precision of BERT-BiLSTM-CRF algorithm in information extraction is verified through comparative experiments. Finally, a safety accident report is used as an example to construct the AEC domain construction safety accident knowledge graph (AEC-KG), which provides visual query knowledge service and verifies the operability of knowledge management.

The experimental results show that the combined BERT-BiLSTM-CRF algorithm has a precision of 84.52%, a recall of 92.35%, and an F1 value of 88.26% in named entity recognition from the AEC domain database. The construction safety knowledge representation model and safety incident knowledge graph realize knowledge visualization.

The proposed framework provides a new knowledge management approach to improve the safety management of practitioners and also enriches the application scenarios of knowledge graph. On the one hand, it innovatively proposes a data application method and knowledge management method of safety accident report that integrates entity relationship and matter evolution logic. On the other hand, the legal adjudication dimension is innovatively added to the knowledge graph in the construction safety field as the basis for the postincident disposal measures of safety accidents, which provides reference for safety managers' decision-making in all aspects.

The use of building information modelling (BIM) methodology has been increasing in the architecture, engineering, construction and operation sector, driven to a new paradigm of work with the use of three-dimensional (3D) parametric models. However, building information modelling (BIM) has been mostly used for as-built models of a building, not yet been widely used by designers during project and construction phases for occupational risks prevention and safety planning. This paper aims to show the capacity of developing tools that allow adding functionalities to Revit software to improve safety procedures and reduce the time spent on modelling them during the design phase.

To reach this objective, a structural 3D model of a building is used to validate the developed tools. A plugin prototype based on legal regulations was developed, allowing qualitative safety assessment through the application of job hazard analysis (JHA), SafeObject and checklists. These tools allow the automated detection of falls from height situations and the automated placement of the correspondent safety systems.

Revit application programming interface allowed the conception and addition of several functionalities that can be used in BIM methodology, and more specifically in the prevention of occupational risks in construction, contributing this paper to the application of a new approach to the prevention through design.

This paper is innovative and important because the developed plugins allowed: automated detection of potential falls from heights in the design stage; automated introduction of safety objects from a BIM Safety Objects Library; and the intercommunication between a BIM model and a safety database, bringing JHA integration directly on the project. The prototype of this work was validated for fall from height hazards but can be extended to other potentials hazards since the initial design stage.

Malaysia plans to be a fully developed and industrialized country by year 2020. Malaysia has achieved good progress in the industrial sector. The industrial sector is operating plants and factories using and storing hazardous substances in quantities exceeding the threshold quantities. The plants that are dealing with hazardous substances exceeding the threshold quantity are classified as major hazard installations (MHIs). Some MHIs are located in heavily populated areas. Experience shows that MHIs pose a risk to the workers and the neighbors of the plants. Malaysia has taken the preventive measures to protect the workers and the public. The preventive measures have been taken through establishment of authorities to set major hazard control regulations, enforcing the regulations, assessing the safety reports and emergency plans, conducting audits and accident investigations. This paper reviews, in brief, the international regulations and guidelines of major hazard control. The paper also reviews the Malaysian experience of major hazard control.

Building a culture of safety in transportation is not dissimilar from building a culture of safety in health. Public health is widely known for protecting the public from diseases through milk pasteurization and chlorination of drinking water, and from injuries by implementing environmental and occupational safeguards and fostering behavioral change. Lifestyle and environmental changes that have contributed to the reductions in smoking and heart disease can also help change driving, walking and cycling behaviors, and environments. Stimulating a culture of safety on the road means providing safe and accessible transportation for all. The vision for a culture of traffic safety is to change the public’s attitude about the unacceptable toll from traffic injuries and to implement a systems approach to traffic injury prevention as a means for improving public health and public safety. Framing the motor vehicle injury problem in this way provides an opportunity for partnerships between highway safety and public health to improve the culture of safety.

The purpose of this study is to identify the causative factors of metro construction safety accidents, analyze the correlation between accidents and causative factors and assist in developing safety management strategies for improving safety performance in the context of the Chinese construction industry.

To achieve these objectives, 13 types and 48 causations were determined based on 274 construction safety accidents in China. Then, 204 cause-and-effect relationships among accidents and causations were identified based on data mining. Next, network theory was employed to develop and analyze the metro construction accident causation network (MCACN).

The topological characteristics of MCACN were obtained, it is both a small-world network and a scale-free network. Controlling critical causative factors can effectively control the occurrence of metro construction accidents. Degree centrality strategy is better than closeness centrality strategy and betweenness centrality strategy.

In practice, it is very difficult to quantitatively identify and determine the importance of different accidents and causative factors. The weights of nodes and edges are failed to be assigned when constructing MCACN.

This study provides a theoretical basis and feasible management reference for construction enterprises in China to control construction risks and reduce safety accidents. More safety resources should be allocated to control critical risks. It is recommended that safety managers implement degree centrality strategy when making safety-related decisions.

This paper establishes the MCACN model based on data mining and network theory, identifies the properties and clarifies the mechanism of metro construction accidents and causations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess the risks and potential risks that may lead to accidents. It aims to look at how to improve risk assessment within SMEs for the benefit of all staff.

The research included results from a Dutch project which identifies accident risks and safety barriers that are presented in a huge database and risk calculator. The method was first to develop a simple way of accessing this enormous amount of data, second, to develop a tool to observe risks and safety barriers in SMEs and to investigate the usefulness of the developed tools in real life, third, to collect data on risks and safety barriers in SMEs for two occupations by following 20 people for three days each and to create a risk profile for each occupations.

The result is a simple way to go through all types of risks for accidents – a tool for risk observations for external safety experts, and useful for SMEs and for risk profiles for two occupations. Finally some experiences about the needs and difficulties in risk awareness in small enterprises as well as requirements for the employer and the employees.

The limitation of the project is that the results have not been tested in SMEs and that the number of people observed and observations days are limited mainly because there was limited time for the project.

The article considers the dilemma that although accident frequency is higher in SMEs, most small companies experience no serious accidents; thus, they are not challenged to focus on safety, neither being aware of the risk of accidents nor being able to identify risk before the accident happens with the purpose of acting and taking action to prevent accidents.

The value of the project is the observation tool and the identification of risks, and being aware of what an employer and employee can do to minimise such risks.

Under-reporting of occupational accidents is a common problem in many countries. This is mainly because of the shortfalls in accident reporting and recording systems. Construction industry being a hazardous industry, the rate of accidents is higher compared with other industries and apparently a high rate of under-reporting. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the rate of under-reporting, significant reasons for under-reporting and identify the shortcomings in the existing accident reporting system in Sri Lanka in aiming to recommend efficient mechanisms for occupational accident recording and reporting to construction industry.

Both secondary and primary data were tapped to gather required data. The secondary data were extracted from the records available in year 2014-2015 at the office of the commissioner for workmen’s compensation and the industrial safety division of the Department of Labor (DoL) to analyze the rate of under-reporting. The primary data were obtained through expert interviews to explore the gaps in reporting system and to identify mechanisms to reduce under-reporting.

The findings revealed 80 per cent of construction accidents are under-reported. Eight gaps in the current accident recording and reporting system and key recommendations at organizational and national level for its improvements were identified.

The findings provide an insight of occupational safety and health (OSH) practices in construction industry and it can be used as an eye opening flash for safety law-makers and practitioners to revisit the existing regulations and practices.

The construction industry is considered one of the most dangerous industries especially in developing countries such as Egypt. Although safety in Egypt is regulated by mainly four pivotal legislations, namely, Law No. 12 (2003) and Ministerial Decrees No. 211, 126 and 134, construction accident records in Egypt are high. Accordingly, this paper aims to develop a framework to activate the health and safety regulations in the Egyptian construction industry.

To achieve this aim, a research methodology consisting of a literature review and a survey questionnaire was developed to accomplish three objectives. First, a literature review was used to identify the causes of site accidents and strategies adopted in different countries to improve and enforce safety, safety roles of stakeholders. Second, a survey questionnaire was conducted with a representative sample of large- and medium-sized construction firms in Egypt to examine their perception of the causes of site accidents. Finally, a framework was developed to activate the health and safety regulations in the Egyptian construction industry.

The research identified 16 causes of construction site accidents. These causes were classified into three categories based on the party responsible for the occurrence of site accidents, namely, workers, organization management and government. Results of data analysis showed that “lack of housekeeping” and “lack of governmental inspection for safety” were ranked the highest causes of site accidents in the Egyptian construction industry, whereas “inefficiency of old safety equipment or no safety equipment at all” and “reluctance to input resources for safety” were ranked the least causes.

This research provides valuable information about the nature of the construction industry with a particular focus on site accidents, causes and impacts of construction site accidents. The study highlighted the safety roles of the Egyptian Governmental bodies in Egypt to improve and enforce safety. The research tackled a topic that received scant attention in construction literature especially in the Egypt context. The framework presented in this paper represents a synthesis that is important and adds value to the knowledge in a manner that has not previously occurred in the Egyptian construction industry.