Analysis of injury events with fuzzy cognitive maps

Issues related to health and safety at work, such as accidents at work, are one of the most important areas of action for global social policy. This paper presents a fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) approach to explore the importance of the relevant factors in industrial plants. For this purpose, industrial plants are described in terms of factors that affect injury risk and the causal relationships involved. In this work, the injuries in an Italian refinery have been studied. The company in this account has a system for monitoring and controlling the machinery but has a large number of minor injuries at work. The causes of these injuries have been found in human behaviours. To analyse the injuries, it is necessary to investigate what individual-level concerns are involved in the perception of risk. For this investigation, an FCM permits us to build a schema of the perception of risk. The resulting analysis of all of these schemas has allowed us to define a method that generically permits a determination of the causes for each type of injury. In fact, it has been possible to determine that factors such as poor attention and concentration or fatigue are the main causes of injuries at work. In light of the results obtained, managers can define appropriate control procedures to diminish the occurrences of the injuries. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.