Pinto, A F d N (2012) Development of a fuzzy qualitative risk assessment model applied to construction industry. PhD thesis, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal.
Abstract
The construction industry is plagued by occupational risky situations and poor working conditions. Risk Assessment for Occupational Safety (RAOS) is the first and key step to achieve adequate safety levels, particularly to support decision-making in safety programs. Most construction safety efforts are applied informally under the premise that simply allocating more resources to safety management will improve safety on site. Moreover, there are many traditional methods to address RAOS, but few have been adapted and validated for use in the construction industry, thus producing poor results. The contribution of this dissertation is a qualitative fuzzy RAOS model, tailored for the construction industry, named QRAM (Qualitative Risk Assessment Model). QRAM is based on four dimensions: Safety Climate Adequacy, (work accidents) Severity Factors, (work accidents) Possibility Factors and Safety Barriers Effectiveness. The risk assessment is based on real data collected by observation of reality, interviews with workers, foreman and engineers and consultation of site documents (working procedures, reports of work accident investigation, etc.), avoiding the use of data obtained by statistical tecnhiques. To rating each parameter it was defined qualitative evaluators - linguistic variables - which allow to perform a user-friendly knowledge elicitation. QRAM was, firstly evaluated by ""peer"" review, with 12 safety experts from Brazil (2), Bulgaria (1), Greece (3), Turkey (3) and Portugal (3), and then, evaluated by comparing QRAM with other RAOS tecnhiques and methods. The safety experts , concluded that: a) QRAM is a versatile tool for occupational safety risk assessment on construction sites; b) the specific checklists for knowledge elicitation are a good decision aid and, c) the use of linguistic variables is a better way to make the risk assessments process more objective and reliable.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | safety climate; working conditions; construction safety; decision making; safety; Brazil; Bulgaria; Greece; Portugal; Turkey; construction site; risk assessment; interview |
| Index terms: | Bulgaria, Turkey, Portugal, engineer, effectiveness, accident investigation, risk assessment, occupational safety, construction industry, dissertation, working conditions, dimension, safety climate, interview, Greece, construction site, Brazil, documents, decision-making, safety management, safety programs, construction safety |
| Subjects: | employment law, professional development, performance management, industry analysis, environmental health, occupational health and safety management, decision analysis, profession, data collection methods, health monitoring assessment and metrics, work location, Geography, health safety and environment, financial risk, research dissemination and communication |
| Topics: | Site Management, Roles and Professions, Cost Management, Research Practice, Information Management, Legal Issues, Quality Management, Risk Management, Sustainability, Health and Safety, Geographical Context |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here