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 injuries/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. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.