Developing a CBR-based adjudication system for fatal construction industry occupational accidents. Part I: Building the system framework

A framework for a decision-support system for adjudicating construction industry occupational accidents is developed using case-based reasoning (CBR) with a nearest-neighbor retrieval (NNR) search mechanism. One hundred thirty-three guilty verdicts of trial court judgments resulting from fatal construction occupational accidents (COAs) with injuries/deaths are collected, and 26 attributes, including 17 problem attributes (PAs) and nine solution attributes (SAs), are identified to describe the causalities between the accidents' characteristics and the adjudgment results. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is used to build a three-layer hierarchy structure and to classify the 17 PAs into four aspect subsets (adjudgment background, accident condition, working environment and defendant). Each aspect and PA is weighted by using the AHP (analytic hierarchical process). Filter rules (FRs) for construction accidents and adaptation rules (ARs) to adjust for differences in accidents are formulated. The proposed system framework provides a platform for engineering professionals to understand the jurisprudence of occupational inju-ries/deaths in the construction industry and also serves as a reference to attorneys and justices. Additionally , the decision-support system may also educate the public in liability issues involved in COAs. An operational system is now under development based on the proposed system framework. A fatal injury or death of a worker or member of the general public on a construction site poses a substantial risk to the construction industry professional. Construction occupational accidents (COAs) not only endanger the lives of workers and affect their families but also delay construction project schedules, damage equipment and cause other societal and economic losses. In this paper, the term ''fatal COA " means an accident involving: (1) death or (2) injury of at least three workers for one or more lost workdays. The fatal COA must be reported within 24 h to the appropriate inspection agency. Once the project owner experiences a fatal COA because of his/ her own negligence, a lawsuit seeking a large award is likely to follow. The responsible parties may be legally liable. The causes of a COA involving various aspects extensively are complicated and result in difficulty of determining the liability. This is especially true for project owners and engineering staff who lack a legal background , so that predicting the adjudication results from an ab-struse law clause is extremely difficult. Because the adjudication results of a fatal COA may be influenced by variables including adjudgment background, accident condition, working environment and defendants, it cannot be predicted simply in …