A Study On The Resilience Of Construction Workers’ Safety Attitudes Under Public Health Emergency:A Multi-agent Based Modeling Approach

The unexpected disruptions represented by public health emergencies are exceptionally significant impacts on construction projects,affecting the performance of the project in many ways.The safety situation in the construction industry has been very challenging in recent years,with the vast majority of construction safety incidents being the direct result of unsafe worker behavior,which is influenced to a considerable extent by worker safety attitudes.In the nearly three years from early 2020 to late 2022 to curb the development of the novel coronavirus infection,a series of corresponding control measures have been introduced around the world.The regular outbreak prevention and control has allowed workers to gradually adapt to the additional safety requirements,however,once an outbreak occurs at the project site,emergency plans need to be activated and more stringent measures need to be taken to respond in the first instance.Construction workers’safety attitudes are in a precarious state under public health emergencies,which in turn leads to unsafe construction worker behavior.Therefore,in order to reduce the impact of major external unexpected disturbance events on construction workers,it should be explored whether construction workers can respond resiliently to them and recover their safety attitudes quickly.This study uses a multi-agent modeling-based approach to describe the response and recovery process of construction workers’safety attitudes after a major disruptive event at a construction site.The resilience of construction workers’safety attitudes was measured by the degree of shock to safety attitudes（₁）and the time required to recover to the initial state（₂）,and the trend of safety attitude change of construction workers under the interaction influence of managers,team leaders,and workers was simulated.The effects of the comprehensive safety parameters of each agent,the interaction of shift leaders under the social network,the degree of impact on the central node,the risk level of disturbing events,and the emergency resource reserve on the safety attitude toughness of construction workers were explored at three levels:individual,group,and external.The conclusions of this paper are:（1）The safety attitude resilience model of construction workers constructed in this study can simulate the results of questionnaire surveys and show the process of workers’safety attitudes falling and then rising to recover under the influence of public health emergencies.（2）In the response phase,the individual-level integrated safety parameters of the team leader,the impact level of the central node at the group level,and the risk level of the disturbance event at the external level have the greatest influence on the safety attitude toughness of construction workers.In the recovery phase,individual-level factors as well as the degree of shock to the central node at the group level determine whether safety attitudes can be fully recovered,while group-level crew interactions and external-level factors influence the time required for recovery.（3）At the individual level,if the combined safety parameters of managers,shift leaders,and workers are higher,the individual safety attitudes show better resilience under external disturbances.At the group level,the less shock workers with high influence receive,the more positive influence they bring to others,and the more active workers’social interaction is,the more resilient safety attitudes are.At the external level,organizations tend to take more time to develop policies and take safety measures for high level risk events,but the impact of external events is temporary and full recovery can be achieved once the event is under control.（4）By comparing the simulation results of the four scenarios,it can be found that each agent at the individual level and the central node at the group level play a crucial role.Despite the adequate reserve of emergency resources,once the agents perform poorly and the central node responds negatively,the security attitude will not be restored in a short time.（5）Construction companies should focus on improving workers’learning and adaptive abilities and group interaction,while fostering a healthy safety atmosphere,playing an active role of team leaders and other informal group leaders,and making risk assessment and response in advance in order to achieve a more stable and positive psychological state when groups of construction workers carry out safety production under unexpected disturbance events.This study considers workers as individuals in a group,constructs a safety attitude resilience model of construction workers under unexpected disturbance events based on the social network interaction of construction workers group,and then provides targeted management countermeasures and improvement measures for construction workers to maintain a stable and good safety attitude under unexpected disturbance events.