Identification of Key Occupational Safety and Health (K3) Risk Factors in Underground Construction Projects Using the Fuzzy Failure Mode and Effect Analysis Method
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.69855/sipil.v2i2.700Keywords:
Occupational Safety and Health (K3), Fuzzy FMEA, Underground Construction, Risk Priority Number, Tunnel SafetyAbstract
Underground construction projects expose workers to complex occupational safety and health (K3) hazards, including tunnel collapse, hazardous atmospheres, groundwater inrush, and confined-space emergencies. Conventional Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) often struggles to prioritize these risks because expert judgments on severity, occurrence, and detection involve considerable uncertainty. Purpose: This study applies the Fuzzy Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (Fuzzy FMEA) method to identify and rank K3 risks in an underground metro tunnel construction project. Methods: Thirty-two potential failure modes were identified through literature review, field observations, and hazard checklists. Expert evaluations from 21 construction safety practitioners, tunnel engineers, and site supervisors were represented using triangular fuzzy numbers, aggregated through a fuzzy weighted-average approach, and defuzzified using the centroid method to calculate the Fuzzy Risk Priority Number (FRPN). Results: The results indicate that tunnel face collapse (FRPN = 842), toxic and oxygen-deficient atmosphere (FRPN = 796), groundwater inrush (FRPN = 733), and rockfall at the tunnel heading (FRPN = 705) are the highest-priority hazards. Compared with the conventional Risk Priority Number (RPN), Fuzzy FMEA produced a Spearman rank correlation of .91 while identifying changes in the ranking of several risks. Implications: Fuzzy FMEA provides a robust and reliable framework for prioritizing K3 risks and supporting effective safety mitigation in underground construction projects. Conclusion: Fuzzy FMEA captures uncertainty in expert judgment that the conventional RPN obscures; future studies should extend the expert panel across multiple underground projects and compare alternative defuzzification methods.
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