Characterizing time series of near-miss accidents in metro construction via complex network theory

•The visibility graph was used to reconstruct the near miss time series into complex networks.•The complex networks for near misses have scale-free, small-world features and hierarchical structures.•The characteristics of the near-miss time series was uncovered based on complex network theory.•The near-miss data from the city of Wuhan, China mainland metro construction was analyzed. Although theoretical analysis to near-miss accidents in construction industry has been frequently advocated, the dynamic and temporal characters of time series of near-miss accidents remain unclear, which could not be easily uncovered by analytical representation approaches. To address this gap, the characteristics of the near-miss accident time series and the mechanism underlying the near-miss accidents in metro construction have been explored from the perspective of complex network theory. Mapping time series into a complex network with visibility graph algorithm, temporal characters and dynamics of inter-event time series of near-miss accidents has been revealed through the analysis and discussion of near-miss accident data from the city of Wuhan, China mainland metro construction. All degree distributions of the construct networks, followed by power law, demonstrate that the inter-event time series of near-miss accidents are scale-free. Moreover, the results show they all have small-world features and are highly clustered into hierarchical structures, indicating that the complex phenomenon are generally existed. With the analysis on the near-miss accident time series via complex network theory, practical insights into near-miss accidents and safety management in metro construction are also proposed.