A Fuzzy Model for Estimating Accidents Possibility of Occurrence in the Construction Industry

Abstract

Quantify or, more generally, estimate the possibility of occurrence of occupational accidents is a decisive step in any occupational risk assessment process. Due to the lack of historic information in the construction industry (accident data collection and recording are incipient and insufficient) and the lack of practical and acurate tools to estimate/quantify the risks of occuring work accidents we need a more systematic and rigorous approach for the construction industry.This work purpose is the definition of a practical Ocuppational Accidents Possibility of occurrence (OAP) model, which proposes a fuzzy approach to determine the posssibility of occurrence of accidents modes. The OAP includes 4 main steps: (1) identification of accidents´modes; (2) definition of a checklist with questions related to factors that may affect the accidents possibility; (3) assessment (rating) of each factor using a fuzzy linguistic variable "adequacy"; (4) aggregation of the rated factors per each mode of accident. The factors will be evaluated by safety experts, from observable conditions or existing data on the construction site. The proposed fuzzy rating evaluation process is done with a linguistic variable that allows measuring the level of inadequacy of the factors. We believe our proposed OAP model contributes to advances in determining the quality of the overall occupational risk assessment.