• 한국안전학회지
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• 제35권2호
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• pp.55-60
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of the economic and workforce factors on the annual number of occupational accident fatalities occurring at the construction sites. The considered variables of the economic factor are the amount of economic losses caused by industrial accidents, the GDP, and the total monthly wage for each economically active population. And, the variables related to the workforce factor are the number of economically active population, the number of female economically active population, and the number of labor union members. The multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine the effect of two factors on the total number of occupational fatalities in the construction industry. The results show that GDP among considered variables in the economic factor had a statistically significant negative relationship with the number of the construction accident fatalities in the construction industry. Among variables related to the workforce factor, economically active population showed a statistically significant negative relationship with the number of the construction accident fatalities.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제21권3호
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• pp.59-66
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• 2006

Injury Ratio Survey Regulations(IRS) was introduced to the construction industry in the Republic of Korea since 1992 and brought positive effect on occupational accidents reduction. There were tremendous decrease of injury ratios and enforcing of contractors' safety organizations from the beginning of IRS. In spite of these positive results, there were some negative effects such as contractors' shrinking injury reports to keep good injury ratios since these figures had a great impact on pre-qualification stage of bidding when general contractors were competing for new construction projects. Thus, this study aims to devote on lessening construction injury and elimination of above negative impacts through the quantitative statistic analysis of the effectiveness on the occupational accidents prevention of IRS. According to this assessment, there were decrease of from 6.37% to 44.34% in the accident ratios compared to those of non-IRS groups and decrease of from 3.32% to 83.51 % in the accident ratios compared to those of general industry including the unreported accidents.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• 제6권3호
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• pp.227-232
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• 2015

Background: In comparison with other industries, the construction industry still has a higher rate of fatal injuries, and thus, there is a need to apply new and innovative approaches for preventing accidents and promoting safe conditions at construction sites. Methods: In this study, the effectiveness of a new incentive system-the surprising incentive system-was assessed. One year after the implementation of this new incentive system, behavioral changes of employees with respect to seven types of activities were observed. Results: The results of this study showed that there is a significant relationship between the new incentive system and the safety performance of frontline employees. The new incentive system had a greater positive impact in the first 6 months since its implementation. In the long term, however, safety performance experienced a gradual reduction. Based on previous studies, all activities selected in this study are important indicators of the safety conditions at workplaces. However, there is a need for a comprehensive and simple-to-apply tool for assessing frontline employees' safety performance. Shortening the intervals between incentives is more effective in promoting safety performance. Conclusion: The results of this study proved that the surprising incentive would improve the employees' safety performance just in the short term because the surprising value of the incentives dwindle over time. For this reason and to maintain the surprising value of the incentive system, the amount and types of incentives need to be evaluated and modified annually or biannually.

• 한국건설관리학회논문집
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• 제22권1호
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• pp.47-54
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• 2021

한국산업안전보건공단의 산업재해통계 보고서 최근 4년 동안의 자료를 확인하면 2017년부터 2020년 6월까지 건설현장의 재해자 수가 약 93,158명, 사망자 수가 약 1,977명으로 건설업이 재해율 총 3위, 사망률 총 1위로 높은 안전사고 추이를 보이고 있다. 그 중에서도 전체 직업군에서 추락으로 인한 사망사고 및 접촉으로 인한 사망사고는 전체 사고 유형 중 3위 안으로 빈번하게 발생하는 안전사고이다. 본 논문은 건설현장의 다양한 유형의 안전사고 중 발생 비율이 가장 높은 추락과 접촉 사고 두 유형의 안전사고를 예방하기 위해 초음파 센서를 이용한 스마트 감지 장치를 개발하여 직접 현장 작업자가 경험하게 한 결과, 설문참여 작업자의 69.5%이상이 센서의 현장 적용성에 대해 긍정적으로 평가하였으며, 이를 토대로 건설업 안전사고의 전체 비율을 감소하는데 일조 하고자 한다.

• International Journal of Safety
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• 제4권1호
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• pp.23-26
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• 2005

In spite of the rapid economic growth in Korea, safety cultures in construction industry have not much improved during last ten years. When it is compared to other developed countries of safety, accident rate of Korean construction sites shows bleak figures. This study compares the safety figures of Korea with the UK figures in order to find out what is needed for the safety of the construction sites in Korea. By comparing occupations, age groups, kind of accident, and agent, this study found several differences and similarities, and derived the directions for better safety management.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.184-191
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• 2018

Background: Due to an increasing number of workers aged 50 years and above, the number of those employed is also on the rise, and those workers aged 50 and over has exceeded 50% of the total fatal occupational injuries. Therefore, it is necessary to implement the selection and concentration by identifying the characteristics of high-risk groups necessary for an effective prevention against and reduction of fatal occupational injuries. Methods: This study analyzed the characteristics of high-risk groups and the occupational injury fatality rate per 10,000 workers among the workers aged 50 and over through a multi-dimensional analysis by sex, employment status of workers, industry and occupation by targeting 4,079 persons who died in fatal occupational injuries from January 2007 to December 12. Results: The share of the workers aged 50 years and above is increasing every year in the total fatal occupational injuries occurrence, and the high-risk groups include 'male workers' by sex, 'daily workers' by worker's status, 'craft and related-trades workers' by occupation, and 'mining' by industry. Conclusion: The most frequent causal objects of fatal occupational injuries of the workers aged 50 years and above are found out to be 'installment and dismantlement of temporary equipment and material on work platforms including scaffold' in the construction industry and 'mobile crane, conveyor belt and fork lifts' in the manufacturing industry.

• 한국안전학회지
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• 제35권4호
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• pp.23-31
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• 2020

In the construction sector, there were 99 fatalities from falls associated with steel tube and system scaffolds for three years from 2016 to 2018 and out of which 27.3 percent (27 workers) were found to have occurred during installing and dismantling procedure. To erect scaffolding which is installed for the work at height, the work platforms are generally installed first and the safety guardrails are installed and vice versa to dismantle. As a result, workers are exposed to the risk of falling because they erect and dismantle scaffolding without guardrails. To minimize the risk of falling, it is necessary to study a new construction method that can erect or dismantle scaffolding while guardrails are installed (called advanced guardrail system). This study analyzed advanced guardrail system in terms of safety regulation, workability and economic efficiency by investigating the domestic situation on the use of scaffolding, reviewing domestic and foreign standards for guardrails and conducting economic feasibility study. The results of this study is expected to greatly contribute to preventing falls in scaffolding installation and dismantlement procedure. As a follow-up study, empirical research is required including physical test of scaffolding with advanced guardrail system and effectiveness analysis after trial applications.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• 제12권1호
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• pp.119-126
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• 2021

Background: During the period 2001 to 2016, the maximum temperatures in Thailand rose from 38-41℃ to 42-44℃. The current occupational heat exposure standard of Thailand issued in 2006 is based on wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) defined for three workload levels without a work-rest regimen. This study examined whether the present standard still protects most workers. Methods: The sample comprised 168 heat acclimatized workers (90 in construction sites, 78 in foundries). Heart rate and auditory canal temperature were recorded continuously for 2 hours. Workplace WBGT, relative humidity, and wind velocity were monitored, and the participants' workloads were estimated. Heat-related symptoms and signs were collected by a questionnaire. Results: Only 55% of the participants worked in workplaces complying with the heat standard. Of them, 79% had auditory canal temperature ≤ 38.5℃, compared with only 58% in noncompliant workplaces. 18% and 43% of the workers in compliant and noncompliant workplaces, respectively, had symptoms from heat stress, the trend being similar across all workload levels. An increase of one degree (C) in WBGT was associated with a 1.85-fold increase (95% confidence interval: 1.44-2.48) in odds for having symptoms. Conclusion: Compliance with the current occupational heat standard protects 4/5 of the workers, whereas noncompliance reduces this proportion to one half. The reasons for noncompliance include the gaps and ambiguities in the law. The law should specify work/rest schedules; outdoor work should be identified as an occupational heat hazard; and the staff should include occupational personnel to manage heat stress in establishments involving heat exposure.

• 대한건축학회논문집:구조계
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• 제35권11호
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• pp.155-162
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• 2019

The construction industry is the highest safety accident causing industry as 28.55% portion of all industries' accidents in Korea. In particular, falling is the highest accidents type composed of 60.16% among the construction field accidents. Therefore, we analyzed the factors of major disaster affecting the fall accident and then derived feature importances by considering various variables. We used data collected from Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency (KOSHA) for learning and predicting in the proposed model. We have an effort to predict the degree of occupational fall accidents by using the machine learning model, i.e., Adaboost, short for Adaptive Boosting. Adaboost is a machine learning meta-algorithm which can be used in conjunction with many other types of learning algorithms to improve performance. Decision trees were combined with AdaBoost in this model to predict and classify the degree of occupational fall accidents. HyOperpt was also used to optimize hyperparameters and to combine k-fold cross validation by hierarchy. We extracted and analyzed feature importances and affecting fall disaster by permutation technique. In this study, we verified the degree of fall accidents with predictive accuracy. The machine learning model was also confirmed to be applicable to the safety accident analysis in construction site. In the future, if the safety accident data is accumulated automatically in the network system using IoT(Internet of things) technology in real time in the construction site, it will be possible to analyze the factors and types of accidents according to the site conditions from the real time data.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• 제11권3호
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• pp.314-321
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• 2020

Background: Occupational accidents occur for a variety of reasons, such as unsafe behaviors of workers and insufficient safety equipment at the workplace, but there are also various economic and social factors that can impact working conditions and working environment. This study analyzed the relationship between changes in economic factors and the occurrence of occupational accidents in Korea. Methods: Multilinear regression analysis was used as the analysis model. The general to specific method was also used, which consecutively removes statistically insignificant variables from a general model that includes dependent variables and lagged variables of dependent variables. Results: The frequency of occupational accidents was found to have a statistically significant relationship to economic indicators. The monthly number of cases of occupational injury and disease and fatal occupational injuries were found to be closely related to manufacturing capacity utilization, differences in the production index in the services sector, and commencements of building construction. The increase in equipment investment indicators was found to reduce fatal occupational injuries. Conclusion: The results of this study may be used to develop occupational accident trends or leading indicators, which in turn can be used by organizations that manage and monitor occupational accidents toward taking administrative action designed to reduce occupational accidents. The results also imply that short-term and mid- to long-term economic and social changes that can impact workers, workplaces and working conditions, and workplace organizations must be taken into account if more effective government policies are to be established and implemented toward further prevention of occupational accidents.