• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.46-53
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• 2020

The domestic construction industry is becoming larger, high-rise and specialized. However, safety consciousness is still staying in low levels and falling accidents are apt to rise compared to other industries. So, the new way of safety management is required for reducing of the construction falling accidents. In this paper, we evaluate appropriateness of safety management on construction sites utilizing USN using smart safery equipment. Thus, we calculate loss costs of falling accidents considering accident rates and costs of the USN using smart safery equipment installation then compare both calculated costs. This research aims to propose the method for reduction of construction accidents in addition to conventional safety control methods by analyzing the propriety of applying USN using smart safery equipment on construction sites.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.52-56
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• 2011

Objectives: The occupational accident rate was officially reported to be 0.77 per 100 workers in 2001 and 0.70 in 2009. The stagnant decrease in accident rate raises a question about the effectiveness of prevention activity because there have been active prevention efforts in the past 10 years. It is also necessary to know the exact status of occupational injuries to direct a prevention strategy. Methods: The author re-analyzed occupational injury statistics to find the reason for stagnant decreases in occupational injuries. Compensated occupational injuries cases were used to calculate fatal and non-fatal injury rates. Injuries from commuting accidents and sports activities were excluded as well as occupational diseases. The number of workers was adjusted to that of full time equivalent employees. Results: The fatal injury rate excluding injuries associated with commuting accidents, sports activities, and occupational diseases decreased from 12.59 in 2001 to 8.20 in 2009. In 2007, 67.5% of accidents that involved being caught in objects, which are mostly caused by machines and equipment, occurred in the manufacturing industry; this type of incident has decreased since 2001. The fatal and non-fatal injury rates in the manufacturing industry have continuously decreased while the rates in the service industry have not changed from 2001 to 2009. Non-fatal injuries might not be reported in many cases. The number of insured workers was underestimated as long working hours were not adjusted for in the reporting system. Conclusion: The occupational fatal injury rate has decreased and the non-fatal injury rate might have decreased during the last 10 years, although the statistics show stagnancy. The decrease of the injury rate was countervailed by various factors. Hence, the current accident rate does not reflect the actual situation of accidents in Korea. Korea needs to develop an improved system to more accurately calculate occupational fatal and non-fatal injury rates.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.3-13
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• 2013

The converted accident rates that included in Pre-Qualification (PQ) are to evaluate the results of accidents which have occurred. Therefore, it is demanded the development of proactive evaluation contents to evaluate the safety management activities and efforts on construction companies. The purpose of this study is to provide basic data for the establishment of proactive evaluation contents at public construction project in Korea through the collected and analyzed the PQ documentation applied by public agencies in Los Angeles, USA. The results indicated that diverse reactive safety evaluations are implemented to examine accidents which occurred in past projects such as occupational health insurance, regulation violation. And also, when the accidents occurred, it is evaluated the proactive safety management actions such as safety education, accident prevention programs, and safety management plans are reflected on the evaluation. Thus, if proactive safety related evaluation contents are established and reflected in PQ examinations together with diverse existing reactive safety evaluations considering converted accident rates, not only the existing function of converted accident rates can be reinforced but also businesses' active safety management activities can be induced and decreases in the construction industry's accident rate can be expected.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.128-135
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• 2022

The comparative evaluation of occupational accident fatality rates (OAFRs) of different countries is complicated owing to the differences in their level of socio-economic development. However, such evaluation is necessary to assess the national occupational safety and health system of a country. This study proposes a statistical method to compare the OAFRs of countries taking into consideration the difference in their level of socio-economic development. We first collected data on the socio-economic indicators and OAFRs of 11 countries over a 30-year period. Next, based on literature survey and statistical correlation analysis, we selected the significant independent variables and built multiple linear regression models to predict OAFR. We also determined the groups of countries having heterogeneous relationships between the independent variables and OAFRs, which are represented by the regression models. The proposed method is demonstrated by comparing the OAFR of Korea with the OAFRs of 10 other developed countries.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.537-542
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• 2020

Background: Personal protective equipment (PPE) has been designed in such a way to reduce accident rates. Unfortunately, existing PPE is rather ineffective as it is not able to provide warning signals when hazard is around. The integration of intelligent systems is envisaged to increase the efficiency of existing PPE. Methods: This project designed a safety vest incorporated with metal detectors which can provide immediate warning to the field workers when there is metal hazard around. This product has greater freedom of design via smart manufacturing as it involves the assembly of few commercially available parts into a single entity. Briefly, the metal detector is a do it yourself (DIY) kit, and the safety vest is purchasable from any local market. The DIY kit was connected to a copper coil and being sewed into the safety vest. Results: The metal detector induces beeping sound when there is metal hazard around. A total of 121 engineering students were introduced to the prototype before being requested to answer a survey associated with the design. Respondents have rated >3.00/5.00 for the design simplicity, ease of usage, and light weight. Meanwhile, respondents suggested that the design should be further improved by increasing the metal detection range. Conclusion: It is envisaged that the introduction of this smart safety vest will allow the workers to carry out their duties securely by reducing the accident rates. Particularly, such design is expected to reduce workplace accident especially during night time at construction sites where the visibility is low.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.41-47
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• 2022

A reliable prediction model of national occupational accident fatality rate can be used to evaluate level of safety and health protection for workers in a country. Moreover, the socio-economic aspects of occupational accidents can be identified through interpretation of a well-organized prediction model. In this paper, we propose a machine learning based relative comparison methods to predict and interpret a national occupational accident fatality rate based on socio-economic indicators. First, we collected 29 years of the relevant data from 11 developed countries. Second, we applied 4 types of machine learning regression models and evaluate their performance. Third, we interpret the contribution of each input variable using Shapley Additive Explanations(SHAP). As a result, Gradient Boosting Regressor showed the best predictive performance. We found that different patterns exist across countries in accordance with different socio-economic variables and occupational accident fatality rate.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.44-50
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• 2022

This study examines the relationship between safety factors and health management systems based on accident statistics in the construction industry stipulated in the Serious Disaster Punishment Act. To determine the level of safety achieved by companies through their health management system, the top 1000 construction firms in the country were surveyed online. Four hundred sixty companies responded to the survey by providing their statistics on major accidents (mortality, accidental mortality, and injury rates). Statistical tests showed that companies with a team dedicated to the oversight of safety and health management had fewer accidents than those without one. Factor and regression analyses revealed that three factors affected the mortality and accident rates: safety and health plan, safety and health professionals, and safety and health activities. Moreover, two factors significantly influenced the injury rate: safety management supported by a cooperative company and implementation of on-site safety and health activities. The findings of this study can be used as a fundamental reference for further research and consultation on the formulation of safety and health management systems for construction companies.

• Journal of Korean Port Research
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.101-112
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• 1999

Traffic accidents increase with the increase of the vehicles in operation on the street. Especially big traffic accidents composed of over 3 killed or 20 injured accidents with the property damage become one of the serious problems to be solved in most of the cities. The purpose of this study is to build the discrimination model on big traffic accidents using the Quantification II theory for establishing the countermeasures to reduce the big traffic accidents. The results are summarized as follows. 1)The existing traffic accident related model could not explain the phenomena of the current traffic accident appropriately. 2) Based on the big traffic accident types vehicle-vehicle, vehicle-alone, vehicle-pedestrian and vehicle-train accident rates 73%, 20.5% 5.6% and two cases respectively. Based on the law violation types safety driving non-fulfillment center line invasion excess speed and signal disobedience were 48.8%, 38.1% 2.8% and 2.8% respectively. 3) Based on the law violation types major factors in big traffic accidents were road and environment, human, and vehicle in order. Those factors were vehicle, road and environment, and human in order based on types of injured driver’s death. 4) Based on the law violation types total hitting and correlation rates of the model were 53.57% and 0.97853. Based on the types of injured driver’s death total hitting and correlation rates of the model were also 71.4% and 0.59583.

• Korean Journal of Occupational Health Nursing
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.65-74
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• 2016

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to predict industrial accident rate using time series analysis. Methods: The rates of industrial accident and occupational injury death were analyzed using industrial accident statistics analysis system of the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency from 2001 to 2014. Time series analysis was done using the most recent data, such as raw materials of Economically Active Population Survey, Economic Statistics System of the Bank of Korea, and e-National indicators. The best-fit model with time series analysis to predict occupational injury was developed by identifying predictors when the value of Akaike Information Criteria was the lowest point. Variables into the model were selected through a series of expertises' consultations and literature review, which consisted of socioeconomic structure, labor force structure, working conditions, and occupational accidents. Results: Indexes at the meso- and macro-levels predicting well occurrence of occupational accidents and occupational injury death were labor force participation rate for ages 45-49 and budget for small scaled workplace support. The rates of industrial accident and occupational injury death are expected to decline. Conclusion: For reducing industrial accident continuously, we call for safe employment policy of economically active middle aged adults and support for improving safety work environment of small sized workplace.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.61-67
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• 2010

Though "Zero Accident Campaign" is a desirable campaign for industrial accident prevention and reducing victims, the number of industrial enterprises has been decreasing abruptly in recent years. One of the reasons for this phenomenon may be attributed to irrationality of 'target accident-free time periods' established by related organizations. This study was carried out to develop a new rational scheme for the campaign. Therefore, for a numerical basis, Poisson process was introduced, and problems induced by current target periods were analyzed mathematically one by one. As a result, it was verified that current target periods were uneven since the probability that manufacturing plants get them would be different form industry to industry. To develop countermeasures, a brand new method were suggested in this research. The first characteristic was that group classification should be based upon average accident rates resulted from past several years, and the second was that adjustment probability which can make the target acquisition probability even. About the suggested method, a questionnaire survey was conducted. To make a conclusion, most manufacturing plants agreed with the suggested method such high affirmative portion that the suggested method would be expected to help promote the campaign again.