Information retrieval in construction hazard identification

The repetitive occurrence of similar accidents is one of the most prevalent features of construction disasters. Similar accident cases provide direct information for determining the risks of scheduled activities and planning safety countermeasures. Researchers have developed many systems to retrieve and use past accident cases. However, this research has the limitations of performing too much retrieval to obtain results regarding construction site conditions, failing to reflect characteristics of safety planning steps, or both. To overcome these limitations, this study proposes an accident case retrieval system that can search similar accident cases. It also improves safety planning by using information retrieval and building information modeling. The retrieval system extracts BIM objects and composes a query set combining BIM objects with site information DB. DB compares a query set with past accident cases and seeks the most similar case. Results are then provided to safety managers. Based on the results of this study, safety managers can reduce excessive query generation. Furthermore, they can easily recognize construction site risks by obtaining coordination of objects where similar accidents occurred.