Journal of Health and Safety at Work

Introduction: Due to the increasing population and the need for setting in cities, we witness an increase in high-rise building in Iran. Moreover, because of the ambiguity and complexity, they have various risks potential. Health problems are among this risks for the residents. These risks have short term or long term effects,which can cause illness or even death.

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Material and Method: In the present study, health risks in high-rise buildings are identified, assessed and ranked. Health issue are identified by conducting interview with experts in high-rise building an using specific health and safety related checklists. Due to ambiguous nature of risks and existence of uncertainly, fuzzy logic technique with trapezoidal distribution was used for quantification. Finally, after risk evaluation and calculation of critical degree of each risk, the risks were ranked.

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Result: Risk factors obtained over 0.5 for most of the risks that indicate the importance of Health in high-rise projects during construction phase. The results also showed that the health risks should be assessed before the start of the project in order to reduce or eliminate their impacts.

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Conclusion: Safety risks in High-rise Building projects is very important. These risks have many impacts directly and indirectly on the time, quality and costs of projects. Therefore, evaluating and controlling each health risk in the design and implementation phases are essential. Most of the risks factors identified in this study, can be prevented by using personal protective equipment. The role of the training people involved in this projects are essential to use personal protective equipment.

Introduction: High-rise building projects are increasing due to the population growth, urban development, and migration of people to the major cities. High-rise buildings have special importance in terms of HSE risks rather than other projects since these projects are located in the cities and in the direct contact with people. However, in most incidents and events, organizations do not have enough insight into the true cost. Therefore, identification and assessment of management of HSE risks is essential.

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Material and Methods: In this research, HSE risks in high-rise buildings that have harmful effect on human health and environment were identified, assessed and ranked. The Risks were identified and assessed through checklist and interview with experts. Considering the uncertainty and the ambiguous nature of the risks, the combination of fuzzy numbers and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method were employed for quantitative analysis. Finally, the estimated risks were ranked for control.

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Results: Using AHP Method, the weight of health, safety, and environment were obtained 0.346, 0.3, and 0.354,respectively, which shows the higher importance of environmental and health risks in construction projects comparing to safety risks.

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Conclusion: Findings in this research indicated that HSE risks are very critical and they should be controlled before start of the project. Moreover, many of HSE risk are due to lack of appropriate HSE culture in the organization and projects that can be reduced by culture-building practices.