Multicriteria decision making models for studying construction safety

Abstract

Owing to the heterogeneous nature of the construction industry, construction managerial and operational safety problems are becoming complicated and need multicriteria assessments. Information on any safety problems is usually uncertain, vague and perhaps grey or fuzzy. In the past, neither the Government nor the management of a construction firm attempted to apply modern decision techniques to study construction safety problems. This research describes a study of using two multicriteria decision making (MCDM) models – Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) and Non-Structural Fuzzy Decision Support System (NSFDSS), to analyze and structure construction managerial and operational safety problems. GRA is used to deal with grey information whereas NSFDSS is aimed at incorporating the fuzzy set theory to allow incorporation of imprecise human classifications during the decision making process. Both decision making models can aid decision makers by providing them with a system base of decision making thereby minimizing mistakes due to natural human errors. Real world illustrative examples at two different levels – the industry level and contractor level – are used in this research. At industry level, the Construction Site Safety Outranking System (CSSOS) using GRA is established to outrank different construction site safety performances. The findings from this example can help precise and timely scheduling of safety inspection by Government safety officials or senior management of construction enterprises. At contractor level, NSFDSS is first adopted to evaluate the effectiveness of safety management system. Its results provide guidance for project management to effectively determine their resource allocation to elements contributing to better safety performance. In addition, NSFDSS is also used to aid the selection of an appropriate machine safeguarding strategy to improve safety operations. This illustrative example demonstrates a systematic approach in deriving an appropriate solution through considering all possible decision criteria and alternatives. This research concludes that safety problems could be analyzed and structured by MCDM models. It is the first attempt to apply an alternative approach to analyze and structure safety problems in order to facilitate continuous safety improvement. Hence, the approach introduced in this research provides a cornerstone for future multicriteria research and model development in the arena of construction safety. Keywords : Managerial, operational, safety problems, multicriteria, grey, fuzzy, MCDM models, Grey Relational Analysis, Non-structural Fuzzy Decision Support System

Date of Award	15 Jul 2005
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Chi Ming TAM (Supervisor)