A transformative solution for construction safety: Blockchain-based system for accident information management

•A novel blockchain-based smart contract system is designed and developed for accident/incident information management of construction projects.•The potential contribution of the system is to ensure integrity, security and transparency of accident/incident information records.•The effectiveness and applicability of the system is verified by simulating the system using real-world construction accident data. Effective management of accident information is a crucial component of safety management within the construction industry, as it reflects the safety performance of the company and allows them to identify the root causes of accidents and prevent similar accidents in the future. However, existing safety information systems provide self-owned, isolated, and centralized environments and fail to present a secure, transparent, and trustworthy platform for monitoring and management of accident information. To address these issues, this paper presents a novel decentralized blockchain-based system for accident/incident information management of construction projects. The proposed system leverages the benefits and advantages of blockchain, smart contracts, and decentralized IPFS storage to address the security transparency, tampering, and trustworthiness issues of the conventional approaches. The proposed system is simulated by using real-world construction accident data to demonstrate how blockchain technology can provide a novel solution to assure security, transparency, authenticity, availability, and immutability of the accident/incident data for improving safety management.