An Extension of the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis with Hesitant Fuzzy Sets to Assess the Occupational Hazards in the Construction Industry

Jalil Heidary Dahooie, Amir Salar Vanaki, Hamid Reza Firoozfar, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas and Audrius Čereška
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Jalil Heidary Dahooie: Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad Ave., Nasr Bridge, Tehran 14155-6311, Iran
Amir Salar Vanaki: Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad Ave., Nasr Bridge, Tehran 14155-6311, Iran
Hamid Reza Firoozfar: Faculty of Management, University of Tehran, Jalal Al-e-Ahmad Ave., Nasr Bridge, Tehran 14155-6311, Iran
Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas: Institute of Sustainable Construction, Laboratory of Operational Research, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Sauletekio av. 11, Vilnius LT-10223, Lithuania
Audrius Čereška: Department of Mechanical and Material Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Basanaviciaus str. 28, LT-03324 Vilnius, Lithuania

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 4, 1-22

Abstract: The construction industry is considered as one of the most dangerous industries in terms of occupational safety and has a high rate of occupational incidents and risks compared to other industries. Given the importance of identifying and assessing the occupational hazards in this industry, researchers have conducted numerous studies using statistical methods, multi-criteria decision-making methods, expert-based judgments, and so on. Although, these researchers have used linguistic variables, fuzzy sets and interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets to overcome challenges such as uncertainty and ambiguity in the risk assessment conducted by experts; the previous models lack in efficiency if the experts are hesitant in their assessment. This leads to the inability to assign a specific membership degree to any risk. Therefore, in this research, it is tried to provide an improved approach to the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method using an Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) method based on the hesitant fuzzy set, which can effectively cope with the hesitance of the experts in the evaluation. Also, Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method is applied for risk factor weighing in the proposed approach. This model is applied to a construction industry case study to solve a realistic occupational risk assessment. Moreover, a comparison is made between the results of this model and those obtained by the conventional FMEA and some other aggregation operators. The results indicate that the newly developed approach is useful and flexible to address complex FMEA problems and can generate logical and reliable priority rankings for failure modes.

Keywords: construction industry; failure mode and effect analysis; hesitant fuzzy set; MCDM; occupational hazards; risk management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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