Research On The Safety Learning Of Metro Construction Workers Based On Cognitive Theories

The fast development of metro construction in China brings the occurrence of accidents and caused mass public attention. Existing research suggested that unsafe acts of construction workers were an essential attributes of accidents. Compared to other industries, the safety management in Chinese construction is lacking behind and the conventional safety training programs are confronting a series of problems that lead to inefficiency in safety training. As a result, it is necessary to explore the mechanism of the safety learning of construction workers.This dissertation reviewed the existing research on safety management, unsafe acts and safety training, and brought up a framework to improve safety learning on metro construction workers. The framework was based on the theories, techniques and methods in cognitive psychology, and targeted in the essential of the learning of safety attitude, safety knowledge and safety skills. Moreover, this dissertation introduced an empirical study of this safety learning program.Firstly, this dissertation analysed the attributes and categories of unsafe acts, and suggested that safety attitude, safety knowledge and safety skills were the main reason of unsafe acts. In this way, it discussed the characteristics of the safety learning in metro construction and brought up the mechanisms and improving strategies of safety learning by applying the cognitive learning theories of Gagne, Bandura and Piaget. Furthermore, it discussed the core issues in the improvement of safety attitude, safety knowledge and safety skills and studied on these issues separately in the following three chapters.Regarding to the improvement of safety attitude, this dissertation discussed the factors and influencing paths of the intent to act unsafely and the most effective way to intervene the intentional unsafe acts and violations. The questionnaire survey suggested that the safety cognition, social norms and self-efficiency were the three factors leading to unsafe intents; furthermore, the attitude ambivalence mediated in the influence of the intent to act unsafely. In terms of the transfer of safety knowledge, this dissertation discussed the mechanism of human information processing and argued that the schema and visual materials were useful for effective transfer of safety knowledge. Then it developed the method to extract safety knowledge from regulations and patrol photos, and to build the safety schema of the workers and the visible objects, as well as the method to demonstrate safety knowledge visually. With regard to the accumulation of safety skills, this dissertation analysed the possible pathways of skill learning and simulated the most effective pathway in heterogeneous groups of metro construction workers, and developed an interactive virtual scenario training platform.Lastly, this dissertation introduced the web-based safety learning system and the implementation of safety learning in metro construction after the requirement analysis and detailed design. The system was then implemented in several metro construction sites in Wuhan and it was found that the workers showed satisfaction of the safety learning program and the system improved safety performance effectively.Theoretically, this dissertation built the framework of safety learning of metro construction based on cognitive theories, and analysed the methods to eliminate unsafe acts with safety learning. Practically, this dissertation designed and developed a safety learning system, which successfully improved safety learning and the safety performance in the metro projects. This dissertation provides essential merits for the research and practice of safety learning with new perspective and methods.