SCHOOL OF QUANTITATIVE SCIENCES SQIT 3033 KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION IN DECISION MAKING (GROUP A)

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT 1 LECTURER: IZWAN NIZAL MOHD SHAHARANEE

SUBMISSION DATE:

6TH MARCH 2014

PREPARED BY: LEE PEI PEI 211245

1.0 Introduction
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO, 2003), approximately two million people die while at work every year. According to the (K. A. M, 2011), the leaders in the frequency of injuries and fatalities has became the serious problem in construction area nowadays. In Malaysia, the fatality rate by occupational accidents in construction is the highest with 72 recorded cases in 2008 and 95 cases in 2007. The primary research result is stated that current practices of the construction industry often take place outdoors under condition which is not favourable to accidents precautions. Result shows that the main cause of accidents in construction is falling from elevation, like a fall from a roof, scaffolding collapsing, and structures collapsing. Thus, Malaysia can refer to the same problem faced by Taiwan on construction sites and improving the safety practices and training programs through data mining technique. In order to obtain more accidents precautions steps, the construction industry has applying data mining techniques to explore factors contributing to occupational injuries in Taiwan. The data mining method known as classification and regression tree (CART) are used by Taiwan construction industry by analyzing a database of 1542 occupational accidents cases during the period 2000 until 2009. The existing literature on construction industry accidents reveals that factors influencing incidence of accidents are commonly similar in different countries (Cattledge et al., 1996; Kartam et al., 2000; Siu et al., 2003; Tam et al., 2004; Fabiano et al., 2004; Angela and Ins, 2005; Macedo and Silva, 2005; Aksorn and Hadikusumo, 2008; Camino Lpez et al., 2008).

2.0 Classification and regression tree (CART)

Data mining, which involves the retrieval and analysis of large amounts of data from a data warehouse, has been successfully used to reveal hidden patterns (or rules) among data in a variety of fields. In the present study, the CART approach to data mining was utilized (Breiman et al., 1984; Ripley, 1996; Chang and Chen, 2005). CART can be used for both regression and classification by

building classification and regression trees for prediction of continuous dependent variables (regression) and categorical predictor variables (classification) (Breiman et al., 1984). Examples of the successful application of diverse data mining techniques include industry and engineering (Bevilacqua et al., 2003; Cheng et al., 2010a).

3.0 Methodology
3.1 Materials In data selection process, the present study examined 1542 reports of occupational accidents and fatalities in the construction sites from 2000 to 2009. In the pre-processing stage, the classification criteria, which classifies occupation accidents in terms of the nature of the injury, accident type, and source of injury by adopting the standards of the accident classification scheme of the American National Standards Institute, Z.16.2-1995 (ANSI, 1995). 3.2 Statistical procedure CART data mining techniques were used to identify factors central to the occurrence of serious occupational injuries in the construction industry. To establish the strength of the associations identified between variables, the study employed the knowledge-mining analysis steps: (1) data cleaning; (2) data integration; (3) data selection; (4) data transformation; (5) data mining; (6) pattern evaluation; and (7) knowledge presentation (Fayyad, 1996; Fayyad and Stolorz, 1997; Voro and Jovic, 2000; Lewis, 2000; Han and Kamber, 2001). The goal was to produce subsets of the data that are as homogeneous as possible with respect to the target variable (Breiman et al., 1984). Process of CART analysis is shown in figure 1 (Appendix). All collected data were analyzed with the statistics package STATISTICA DATA MINER V8.0. CART was used to investigate the occurrence rules of accident type (Y) in public and private projects using different independent variables (Xi), namely project type, company size, project contract amount, work being performed at the time of the accident, accident location, source of injury, worker type, unsafe conditions, and unsafe acts. The final results

of factors that causing occupational accidents on construction sites has shown in table 2 (Appendix).

4.0 Conclusions
The issue of occupational injuries in the construction industry is crucial. The purpose of this study was to investigate serious occupational injuries in the construction industry between 2000 and 2009 in Taiwan and to identify their factors as well as employed it in Malaysia issue.

Appendix

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