A Deep Learning Model Development to Predict Safety Accidents for Sustainable Construction: A Case Study of Fall Accidents in South Korea

So far, studies for predicting construction safety accidents have mostly been conducted by statistical analysis methods that assume linear models, such as regression and time series analysis. However, it is difficult for this statistical analysis method to reflect the nonlinear characteristics of construction safety accidents determined by complex influencing factors. In general, deep learning techniques are used to analyze the nonlinear characteristics of complex influencing factors. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to propose a framework for developing a deep learning model for predicting safety accidents for sustainable construction. For this study, 1766 cases of actual accidents were collected by the Korea Occupational Safety Authority (KOSHA) over the 10-year period from 2010 to 2019. Eight factors influencing accident prediction such as medical day, progress rate, and construction scale were selected. Subsequently, the predictive power between deep learning models and conventional multi-regression models was compared using actual accident data at construction sites. As a result, a deep neural network (DNN) improved predictive power by 9.3% in mean absolute error (MAE) and 10.6% in root mean square error (RMSE) compared to a conventional multi-regression model. The results of this study provide guidelines for the introduction of deep learning technology to construction safety management.