Safety Risks Impacts Analysis on Construction Project Objectives Using a Hybrid Model of Fuzzy Expert System and Latin Hyper Cube Sampling

Background and aims: The construction industry has a high rate of fatal or nonfatal injuries and all around the world which remains one of the most dangerous occupations till now. Since project safety and measuring danger in the construction industry is a crucial subject, so this study aimed to measure the impacts of safety risks on the time and cost objectives of project using a hybrid method of expert system and efficient simulation based on the nature of safety risks.  Methods: After recognizing safety risks and specifying the level of uncertainty of occurrence and risks impacts by using designed Fuzzy Expert System, safety risks integrated to the initial plan of scheduling and budgeting for simulating the safety risks impacts on time and cost objectives of the project by using Latin Hypercube Sampling.  Results: Assessment of safety risks systematically without human interference with fuzzy expert system makes the appropriate response to the identified risks. Also, simulating the safety risks impacts on project time and cost plans in three phases (before identification of risks, after identification of risks and finally, after doing corrective actions) not only helps the project managers to monitor the safety projects better, but also allows us to simulate the risks with high impacts but with low probabilities which in the classic Monte Carlo simulation the evaluation of these kind of risks (low probability-high impact) is not accurate. Conclusion: Systematic analysis of safety risks impacts on the objectives of a project (time and cost) by using the proposed hybrid Fuzzy Expert System- Latin Hypercube Simulation in the construction industry can lead to effective risk management and better planning, scheduling and budgeting.