• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2021.05a
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• pp.40-41
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• 2021

The construction industry has the highest occupational accidents/injuries among all industries. Korean government installed surveillance camera systems at construction sites to reduce occupational accident rates. Construction safety managers are monitoring potential hazards at the sites through surveillance system; however, the human capability of monitoring surveillance system with their own eyes has critical issues. Therefore, this study proposed to build a deep learning-based safety monitoring system that can obtain information on the recognition, location, identification of workers and heavy equipment in the construction sites by applying multiple-object tracking with instance segmentation. To evaluate the system's performance, we utilized the MS COCO and MOT challenge metrics. These results present that it is optimal for efficiently automating monitoring surveillance system task at construction sites.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2023.05a
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• pp.335-336
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• 2023

The military has adopted and implemented risk assessment since 2013 to reduce fatalities and accident rates at construction sites. However, risk assessment is carried out as a voluntary preventive activity and is maintained as a superficial administrative process for owners. Risk assessment must comply with the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Enforcement Guideline of Risk Assessment. However, the scope of the assessment covers many industries, including manufacturing and distribution, making it difficult to apply to construction sites. As a result, the guidelines are interpreted and applied differently at each construction site. This study aims to improve the risk assessment system so that it is applicable to construction projects and proposes the improvement of the risk assessment system by analyzing the current status of serious accidents in military construction projects.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.12
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• pp.4382-4394
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• 2023

Passive auto-catalytic recombiners (PARs) are widely used to mitigate a hydrogen hazard. The first step to evaluate the hydrogen safety by PARs is to obtain qualified test data of the PARs for validation of their analytical model. SPARC PAR tests SP8 and SP9 were conducted to evaluate the hydrogen recombination characteristics of a honeycomb-shaped catalyst PAR. To obtain the hydrogen recombination rate from the PAR test data, two methods, Method-1 and Method-2, introduced by the THAI project, were applied. Since a large gradient of hydrogen concentration developed during hydrogen injection can cause a large error in the hydrogen mass obtained by integrating the measured hydrogen concentrations, a gate was installed at the PAR inlet to homogenize hydrogen in the test vessel before the PAR operation in the tests. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code with a PAR model was also applied to evaluate the characteristics of the PAR recombination according to the PAR inlet conditions, and the results were compared with those from Method-1 and Method-2. It was confirmed that the recombination rates from Method-1 require a correction factor to be compatible with results from Method-2 and the CFD simulation in the case of the SPARC-PAR tests.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.132-146
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• 2017

Appropriate speed limits at a reasonable level in urban roads are highly important factors for efficient and safe movement. Thus, it is greatly necessary to develop the objective models or methodology based on engineering study considering factors such as traffic accident rates, roadside development levels, and roadway geometry characteristics etc. The purpose of this study is to develop the estimate model of appropriate speed limits at each road sections in urban roads using traffic information big data and field specific data and to review the effects of accident decrease. In this study, the estimate method of appropriate speed limits in directional two or more lanes of urban roads is reflecting features of actual variables in a form of adjustment factor on the basis of the maximum statutory speed limits. As a result of investigating and testing influential variables, the main variables to affect the operating speed are the function of road, the existence of median, the width of lane, the number of traffic entrance/exit path and the number of traffic signal or nonsignal at intersection and crosswalk. As a result of testing this model, when the differences are bigger between the real operating speed and the recommended speed limits using model developed in this study, the accident rate generally turns out to be higher. In case of using the model proposed in this study, it means accident rate can be lower. When the result of this study is applied, the speed limits of directional two or more lane roads in Seoul appears about 11km/h lower than the current speed limits. The decrease of average operating speed caused by the decrease of speed limits is 2.8km/h, and the decrease effect of whole accidents according to the decrease of speed is 18% at research road. In case that accident severity is considered, the accident decrease effects are expected to 17~24% in fatalities, 11~17% in seriously injured road user, 6~9% in slightly injured road user, 5~6% in property damage only accidents.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.303-310
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• 2018

One of most shocking headlines is a serious chain collision accident (CCA). The development of CCA has a temporal and spatial locality, and the information of the CCA is time-critical. Due to these characteristics of CCA, traffic accident information should be rapidly propagated to drivers in order to reduce chain collisions, right after the first accident occurs. Inter-vehicle communication (IVC) based on ad-hoc communication is one of promising alternatives for locally urgent information propagation. Despite this potential of IVC, research for the effects of IVC on the reduction of CCA has not been reported so far. Therefore, this study develops the parallel platform of microscopic vehicle and IVC communication simulators and then analyses the effects of IVC on the reduction of the second collision related to a series of vehicles. To demonstrate the potential of the IVC-based propagation of urgent traffic accident information for the reduction of CCA, the reduction of approaching-vehicle speed, the propagation speed of accident information, and then the reduction of CCA were analysed, respectively, according to scenarios of combination of market rates and traffic volumes. The analysis results showed that CCA can be effectively reduced to 40~60% and 80~82% at the penetration rates of 10% and 50%, respectively.

• Industry Promotion Research
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.69-75
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• 2024

Korea has entered the ranks of advanced countries in terms of economic size and technological competitiveness. However, its industrial accident fatality rate remains among the lowest in OECD countries, and recent incidents such as various building collapses have resulted in numerous deaths of workers or citizens, reminiscent of accidents in developing countries. According to the 2022 Industrial Accident Status Analysis by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, out of the 874 fatalities in work-related accidents in 2022 across all industries, 402 were in the construction industry, accounting for approximately 46% of all fatalities. In particular, the construction industry's fatality rate stands at 1.61, significantly higher than the overall industry fatality rate of 0.43, indicating its severity. Construction ranks highest in terms of fatality rates, with mining at 12.18 and fishing at 1.80. When categorizing construction projects into private and public, private projects show significantly higher figures in terms of contracts, contract amounts, accident numbers, and fatalities compared to public projects. However, unlike public agencies, many private clients lack adequate safety and health activities and lack established safety and health systems. This study aims to raise awareness among private clients about the need to establish safety and health systems and enhance safety and health activities, and to discuss the direction of future development of advanced safety and health practices among private clients.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.117-125
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• 2022

Background: External-cause mortality is an important public health issue worldwide. Considering its significance to workers' health and inequalities across industries, we aimed to describe the state of external-cause mortality and investigate its difference by industry in Republic of Korea based on data for 2018. Methods: Data obtained from the Statistics Korea and Korean Employment Information System were used. External causes of death were divided into three categories (suicide, transport accident, and others), and death occurred during employment period or within 90 days after unemployment was regarded as workers' death. We calculated age- and sex-standardized mortalities per 100,000, standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) compared to the general population and total workers, and mortality rate ratios (RRs) across industries using information and communication as a reference. Correlation analyses between income, education, and mortality were conducted. Results: Age- and sex-standardized external-cause mortality per 100,000 in all workers was 29.4 (suicide: 16.2, transport accident: 6.6, others: 6.6). Compared to the general population, all external-cause and suicide SMRs were significantly lower; however, there was no significant difference in transport accidents. When compared to total workers, wholesale, transportation, and business facilities management showed higher SMR for suicide, and agriculture, forestry, and fishing, mining and quarrying, construction, transportation and storage, and public administration and defense showed higher SMR for transport accidents. A moderate to strong negative correlation was observed between education level and mortality (both age- and sex-standardized mortality rates and SMR compared to the general population). Conclusion: Inequalities in external-cause mortalities from suicide, transport accidents, and other causes were found. For reducing the differences, improved policies are needed for industries with higher mortalities.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.23-34
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• 2004

The importance of the industrial safety has been growing gradually as well as the prevention activities on industrial accidents. Industrial accident rates have been decreasing by the prevention activities. However, the fatal industrial accidents such as the death tend to increase and risk per accident has increased. The previous studies on the industrial accidents focus on the entire accidents. However, these studies are lacking for the fatal industrial accidents such as the death. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics and trend of death which occurred by industrial accident, based on the real data of deaths collected last 5 years from 1999 to 2003 in korea. This paper suggests a analysis method using MDS(MultiDimensional Scaling) that considers accidents variables and properties simultaneously. We evaluate MDPREF (Multidimensional Analysis of Preference Data), one of the MDS analysis, to know the relations between the type of industry and region as well as the type of industry and occupation. This paper finds the type of industry which has high possibilities of death by regional groups. In addition, we find the type of occupation which has high possibilities of death by the type of industry. These findings indicate that industrial classification should be differently controled according to type of occupation and region.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.96-104
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• 2012

The objective of this study is to compare on the occupational injury rate and mortality rate of all workers and foreign workers. By doing so, this study seeks to find out the improvements necessary to secure the basic safety net for foreign workers, as well as to find out the legal and institutional measures in place to make timely political intervention and protect the health of foreign workers. The status of foreign workers in Korea, their employment trends by industries, and occupational accident types and scales of Korean and foreign workers were analyzed from 2005 to 2009. Each year, foreign workers' occupational injury rate was much lower than Korea's overall occupational injury rate. But when analyzed by industry, occupational injury rate (death rate per 10,000 workers) of manufacturing industry was about 2 to 5 times higher than the overall occupational injury rate in Korea. Also, construction industry showed 3 to 16 times higher rate than the rate of overall industries. Although the death rate per 10,000 workers showed a declining yearly trend, foreign workers' occupational injury rate has the tendency to increase gradually. In particular, occupational injury rates and death rates per 10,000 workers were considerably high in the manufacturing and construction industries.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.104-109
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• 2012

Singapore, an island republic of over 5 million inhabitants, has 3.1 million workers. Most are employed in the service, finance and tourist/transport industry. Significant numbers work in manufacturing, construction and heavy industry. Following a series of construction and shipyard accidents with multiple deaths in 2004, the government announced its intention to reduce workplace fatalities from 4.9 to 2.5 per 100,000 by 2015. There was strong political will to achieve this target. The strategic approaches were to build workplace safety and health (WSH) capabilities; implement legislative changes with enforcement; promote benefits of WSH and recognize best practices, and enhance partnership with stakeholders. The anticipated outcomes were to reduce workplace fatality and injury rates; have WSH as an integral part of business; and establish a progressive and pervasive WSH culture. With these measures, the workplace fatality rate declined from 4.9/100,000 in 2004, to 2.2/100,000 in 2010. However, other confounding factors could also account for this decline, and have to be considered. The next target, announced by Singapore's Prime Minister in 2008, is to further reduce the workplace fatality rate to 1.8/100,000 by 2018, and to have "one of the best workplace safety records in the world".