Safety supervision of tower crane operation on construction sites: An evolutionary game analysis

Tower crane is one of the most widely used equipment on the construction sites, but followed by a high accident rate. How to prevent the tower crane operation accident has already been an urgent mission. Although researchers carried out a number of studies about accident causes analysis, monitoring technology and structural mechanics analysis, one of the important gaps is that crane stakeholders and supervision bodies, as the components of a holistic crane safety system, were neglected, resulting in that the prevention of tower crane accidents is seldom solved fundamentally. To bridge these gaps, this paper takes the main stakeholders involved in the tower crane operation, namely, the tower crane users (TCU), the responsible party for repair (RPR) and the responsible party for supervisor (RPS), as research objects. A tripartite evolutionary game model is established. The accident risk perception of each stakeholder is considered in the proposed model and an accident preference coefficient is used to express the important factor. The evolution laws of safety strategy selection of the stakeholders are revealed by solving the proposed model. The numerical simulation is applied to verify the rationality of the solution results of the model. The results find that when the sum of penalty amount and safety reward performance is greater than the safety input cost, RPS, RPR and TCU will adopt the favorable safety supervision strategies of tower crane operation; the accident risk perception of RPR has a greater impact on the evolution and the strategy stability of the three stakeholders.

Automated summary

Tower cranes are widely used on construction sites but have a high accident rate. This study focuses on bridging the gap in crane safety by considering the stakeholders involved in crane operation and establishing an evolutionary game model. The model considers the accident risk perception of each stakeholder and reveals the evolution of safety strategy selection. The results show that safety supervision strategies are adopted when the penalty and safety reward performance outweigh the safety input cost, and the perception of the responsible party for repair has a significant impact on the evolution and strategy stability of the stakeholders.