One of the goals of the BIMprove project is to use emerging technologies to improve safety on construction sites.
Figure 5 Accidents percentage per sector. Colour code: Blue is fatal, orange is non-fatal. Source: Eurostat
Construction is unfortunately one of the industries with the highest number of serious accidents. As shown in Fig. 5, more than 20% of the fatal worker accidents in 2018 were in Construction. In a sense, that is not surprising because the industry handles a lot of physical work in a quickly changing environment. Heavy machines and big components, high voltage electricity, chemicals and heights are part of the workplace. The teams doing the work have often never worked together before, and they are creating a building that they are usually doing for the first time.
Figure 6 Trend of accidents in construction, 2012 – 2018. Source Eurostat.
A positive thing is that compared with the situation 10 years ago, as shown in Fig. 6 the number of fatal accidents in construction has been reduced by around 30%, according to Eurostat.
However, the numbers seem to have stabilized and remain higher than those of the other major sectors of the economy (in absolute terms). That is why one of the main objectives of BIMprove is to contribute to the development of new approaches to reduce this risk.
Figure 7a: Fatal accident rate (2010) by country in EU |
Figure 7b: Fatal accident rate (2019) by country in EU |
Fig. 7a shows the map-visualization between European countries regarding the fatal accident rate in 2010, whereas Fig. 7b shows the same for 2019. It is interesting to note that the max accident rate for a country changed for the better – so an important reader guidance is to understand that the colour codes (ref the legend) in 6a and 6b is not the same.
It might be theorized that the highest interest in a system that can improve safety would be in the countries that have the highest rates, because the gain would the biggest. But it could be the opposite, that the countries with the lowest rate are those who prioritize safety the most – and thus would be most interested in such a system.
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