Analysis of Fatal Accidents and Their Causes in the Korean Construction Industry

The construction industry is one of the most hazardous industries in many countries. Many studies have asserted that industrial accidents could be prevented by eliminating their root causes. However, given that accident occurrence processes are considerably complex and often invisible, it is difficult to identify and eliminate the root causes. Based on this recognition, this paper aims to analyze the causality of construction accidents on the basis of direct causes that are classified into unsafe actions (UA) and unsafe conditions (UC). A logistic regression is applied to examine associations between UAs and UCs and their significances in triggering construction accidents. Then, a Delphi method is applied to determine the relationships between direct and root causes of construction accidents. This study contributes to an improved understanding of the complex causal process of construction accidents, which is a necessary stepping-stone to prevent construction accidents. Meanwhile, only one-to-one combinations of UCs and UAs are considered in this paper. Thus, follow-up studies to examine the impact of one-to-many or many-to-many combinations are needed.