An Occupational Safety Risk Management System for Coastal Construction Projects

Inadequate management of safety risks causes fatalities, injuries, delays, and cost overruns in construction projects. Unpredictable and hostile conditions in coastal construction exacerbate these safety risks. Successful risk management requires effective management and communication of risk information as well as rapid access to relevant knowledge. For this purpose, safety risk management systems were developed using digital technologies, however, none focus on coastal construction, where the activities, risk factors, and mitigation methods are significantly different. This study aims to develop an occupational safety risk management system tailored to the specific needs of coastal construction projects that (1) collects risk data from the site in a structured and continuous manner and (2) facilitates knowledge-based decision-making to support effective risk management utilizing digital technologies. A prototype is developed and use cases are presented to illustrate the main objectives of the prototype and the proposed vision for its integration into building information modeling (BIM). The deployment in two real-world projects demonstrates that the developed prototype is applicable, practical, usable and that real-time risk data can be collected and analyzed with the proposed system. Using the risk information collected by the prototype, which supports proactive and dynamic risk management, managers can make critical decisions about the current project, undertake long-term safety planning, and utilize an organizational learning approach for risk avoidance in future projects.