Construction Research Congress 2014 ©ASCE 2014 1861

Prediction of Safety Climate through Neural Network

1 2
D A PATEL and K N JHA
1 2
Research Scholar , Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology Delhi, HauzKhas, New Delhi- 110 016, India; PH (+91) 26596255; FAX (+91)
1126581117; email: dapscholar@gmail.com, knjha@civil.iitd.ac.in

ABSTRACT
Safety climate is one of the indicators of safety performance of a construction project. It
is a ‘snapshot’ of the safety culture of any organization, and it is dynamic in nature. It reflects the
employees’ perception and attitude towards the existing safety condition at the construction sites.
The important constructs for the safety climate are determined through literature review. The
constructs are assumed to influence the behavior of workers at the projects. The aim of this study
is to develop a model to predict the safety climate on a construction project using the artificial
neural network (ANN). The constructs are used as inputs and safety climate of a project is used
as output for the ANN algorithm. For the study, 200 responses have been collected through a
questionnaire survey across the country. A three-layer feed forward back propagation neural
network (10-18-1) has been found suitable for the analysis. It has been trained, validated, and
tested during the model development. The developed model is found to be predicting the safe
climate of a construction project reasonably well. Commitment, supervisory environment,
personnel appreciation and competence could be proposed as effective and positive constructs of
safety climate based on the results of the study. The model should prove to be helpful to clients
and contractors to develop positive safety climate and thereby managing safety of workers
effectively at construction projects.

INTRODUCTION
Safety of construction workers is a major issue at construction sites all over the world.
The cultivation of safety culture is essential for any organization to prevent accident at a
construction site. A positive safety culture can increase safety performance in projects because it
is directly correlated to safety performance (Molennar et al. 2009). Safety climate is used as an
indicator of safety performance and unsafe or safe work behavior can be predicted by studying it.
Prediction of safety climate may be helpful in identifying the weaknesses in safety climate and
remedial measures may be taken prior to an accident occurrence. This will lead to manage safety
issues effectively and continuous improvement strategies can be evolved at construction sites.
Thus, the objective set for this study is to develop a model to predict safety climate on new
construction projects based on an artificial neural network (ANN) model.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Safety climate is a ‘snapshot’ of workforce perceptions of safety (Mearns et al. 1998).
Fang et al. (2006) and Choudhry et al. (2007) explain ‘safety climate’; it is exactly the ‘snapshot’
that describes ‘the way we do things’. It is the perceptions about the state of safety at a particular
time. It is closely concerned with intangible issues such as environmental and situational factors.
Now a day, top management of companies also recognizes that safety climate can play an
important role in increasing the safety performance (Fang et al.2006). The safety climate is a
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reliable indicator among variety of quantitative and qualitative data collection tools to measure
the safety culture (Teo and Feng 2009).
A substantial research work has been conducted on safety climate and safety culture and
their interrelationship, their consequences on safe work behavior, and safety performance in
different industries, including construction. Literature on safety climate point out that earlier
research has been limited in determining the dimensions or elements of construction safety
climate (Zohar1980; DeDobbeleer and Beland 1991; HSE 2001; Flin et al.2000; Mohamed 2002;
Fang et al.2006) and to study the interrelationship of safety climate and safety performance
(Mohamed 2002). Zohar (2008) suggests enlarging the field of safety climate research beyond
the operational and measurement stage.
According to Copper and Phillips (2004), there is no safety instrument available to
predict safety climate on construction projects. Choudhry et al. (2007) referred Geller’s model
and Cooper’s model and presented a new model. They noted that safety culture was the product
of interaction between psychological aspect, behavioral aspect and situational or environmental
aspect in construction organizations. Teo and Feng (2009) studied the relationship between
safety culture and safety climate. They established that assessment of safety climate can predict
the level of safety culture of construction organizations. They formulated hypothesis and
concluded that safety climate has an impact on the psychological aspect, behavioral aspect, and
environmental or situational aspect of safety culture. Still, no significant effort has been made to
predict safety climate on construction projects so far considering its determinants.

Safety climate determinants

Many definitions and explanations of safety climate and safety culture are available in the
literature. As a result, there is no consensus about the factor structure of the safety climate (Flin
et al. 2000; Mohamed 2002; Mearns et al. 2003). In an earlier study, Zohar (1980) presented a
safety climate model possessing eight dimensions to define organizational characteristics in
Israel. Brown and Holmes (1986) attempted to validate Zohar’s safety climate model on 10
American manufacturing and production companies. However, they used only three safety
climate dimensions in place of eight for their study. Similarly, DeDobbeleer and Beland (1991)
utilized Brown and Holmes’s (1986) model on construction sites. It is observed that the
inconsistencies associated with various factors, and their different characteristics may cause a
difficulty in deciding the determinants to reflect the clear picture of safety climate.
Mohamed (2002) carried out structural equation modeling to confirm that the ten
constituents of safety climate are congruent with empirical evidence. The ten safety climate
constructs are commitment (perceptions of management’s visible commitment to health and
safety issues)(I1),communication (the nature and efficiency of health and safety communication
within the organization)(I2), safety rules and procedures (views on the efficacy and necessity of
rules and procedures)(I3), supportive environment (the nature of social environment at work)(I4),
supervisory environment (healthy relationship between supervisor and workers)(I5), worker’
involvement (the extent to which safety is a focus for everyone and all are involved) (I6),
personnel appreciation of risk (how individuals view the risk associated with work)(I7), appraisal
of physical work environment and work hazards (perceptions of the nature of the physical
environment)(I8), work pressure (workers feel under pressure to complete work as per time plan)
(I9), and competence (refers to the general level of worker’s qualification, skills, knowledge,
experience, and training)(I10).Similarly, other related studies (Zohar 1980; Fang et al. 2006) also
presented empirical evidence that similar ten factors impact highly on safety climate in
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construction site environments. These determinants affect the level of safe work behavior and
cover broad areas in terms of organizational context, social environment, individual appreciation,
and work environment.
Mohamed (2002) presented a model having three explicit elements; antecedents to safety
climate, safety climate, and outcome of safety climate as safe work behavior. Safety climate
constructs cultivate the safety climate of a construction project. Hence, for this study, the ten
determinants of safety climate presented by Mohamed (2002) have been adopted. These
determinants present the actual picture of safety climate, and they have potential to deduce safety
climate.

Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is an information-processing system that has been
developed as generalizations of mathematical models based on human neural biology. An ANN
is composed of nodes connected by directed links. Each link has a numeric weight as shown in
Figure 1.
ANNs have many advantages over traditional methods for modeling due to their distinct
features. ANNs determine complicated relationship among a set of data and where the
relationship between data is highly unknown. ANNs are data driven and self-adaptive methods
because they can capture subtle functional relationships among the data even if the underlying
relationship is hard and complex. They can automatically adjust their weights to optimize their
behavior unlike mathematical and statistical models (Boussabaine1996).ANNs are able to detain
complex nonlinear relationship with better accuracy (Rumelhart et al. 1994).
ANN based models generate better prediction outcome than those obtained from
regression models (Wang and Gibson 2010). According to Wang and Gibson (2010), it is not
necessary that data should follow a specific statistical distribution. Also, there is no requirement
as such to study the inter relationship among inputs and outputs before developing an ANN
based model. ANNs have been used for classification, clustering, vector quantification, control,
pattern association, prediction, function approximation, and optimization. Due to its useful
features, ANN is a popular research tool even in construction management (Jha and
Chockalingam 2009; Azadeh et al. 2011; Beriha et al. 2012).
The relationship between safety climate and their constructs is nonlinear and complex.
H1
H2
I1
I2
ih
wkho1 O1
wm ,k
Im Hk

I10
H18
Figure 1.Configuration of the developed neural network (10-18-1)
Construction Research Congress 2014 ©ASCE 2014 1864

Nevertheless, ANNs have the capability to predict safety climate of a construction

project. Hence, an ANN has been used to develop a model to predict and evaluate the safety
climate (O1) of a construction project. Such studies have not been conducted in the context of a
construction project so far.

RESEARCH METHOD
Determination of inputs and output is necessary for development of an ANN based
prediction model. In this study, for the model development, ten determinants of safety climate
are taken as inputs and safety climate is taken as an output.
Subsequently, a questionnaire was prepared with the objective of assessing the value of
each safety climate construct. Questionnaire surveys offer a snapshot of the prevailing state of
safety and are useful in determining the perceptions of employees of the organizations. The
questionnaire was broadly based on the questionnaire used by Mohamed (2002) and Health and
Safety Climate Survey Tool of HSE (2001). The questionnaire consisted of three parts. First part
of the questionnaire was for acquiring the personnel information from a respondent. The ten
safety constructs and their seventy respective attributes (seven attributes for each safety
construct) were listed in the second part of the questionnaire. The questions in the questionnaire
assessed the significance of the 70 variables on a five-point Likert scale (from ‘strongly disagree’
to ‘strongly agree’). To quantify the linguistic terms: ‘strongly disagree’, ‘disagree’, ‘neither
agree nor disagree’, ‘agree’, and ‘strongly agree’ are assigned the values ‘-2’, ‘-1’, ‘0’, ‘+1’, and
‘+2’respectively for calculating the construct indices.
By assigning equal weight to each attribute, a dimensionless quantity, construct index
(CI), was developed to represent the value of each safety climate construct. CI is derived by the
following formula;

1 7
CI m   Amn
7 n 1

Where, CIm is the score of mth construct of safety climate (m = 1,2,3…..10); Amn is the nth
attribute score of mth construct from the Likert scale (n=1,2,3…7). The construct index
corresponds to the characteristics of relevant construct of safety climate.
For evaluating safety climate, ten statements are given in the third part of the
questionnaire. Respondents were asked to rate the ten statements on a scale of 1 to 9 (from ‘very
weak endorsement’ to ‘very strong endorsement’) based on their current roles that safety plays
within their work environment. If the response to a statement was ‘no’, the answer was coded as
zero. An overall average safety score was then computed by summing the 10 scores and dividing
it by 100. The score is normalized to get the value from 0 to 0.9. The construct index for each
safety climate construct is used as inputs and safety climate is used as an output for the ANN
model.
The questionnaires were responded by construction practitioners, supervisors, safety
officers, and engineers working in medium to major large construction organizations across
India. Authors approached them at sites, conferences, training centers, workshops, etc., besides
employing the usual postal services. A total of 200 responses were collected out of which 60
(30%) responses were from public sector and 140 (70%) responses were from private sector. The
combined average experience was 11 years.
Construction Research Congress 2014 ©ASCE 2014 1865

DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF THE PREDICTION MODEL

The important phases for developing the prediction model using ANN are discussed
below:
1. The multilayered feed-forward network with back propagation was chosen for the
development of the model. The neurons in all the layers fully connected with the feed
forward manner are shown in Figure 1.
2. The training was carried out using the MATLAB NN toolbox (Matlab 2010). Coding had
been prepared to calculate necessary parameters for the model in Matlab.
3. Sigmoid function (logsig) was utilized as an activation function and the Levenberg-
Marquardt back propagation learning algorithm (trainlm) was applied for training.
4. Out of the 200 responses obtained as mentioned above, 150 (75%), 20 (10%), and 30 (15%),
responses were used for training, validating, and testing of the network respectively.
Box plot was used to identify outliers from data. Authors did not get any data lying outside
the 1.5 times quartile range. Thus there are no outliers. One hidden layer was chosen and the
number of neurons in this layer was decided in the learning process by trial and error. For the
training, several trials had been carried out with different numbers of neurons in the hidden
layer starting from 10 neurons in the hidden layer(HN) and progressively increasing up to 20
neurons and checking especially the mean square errors (MSE) and mean absolute
percentage error (MAPE) for the training, validating, and testing.

Table 1. Statistical Parameters of Neural Network Model

Statistical No. of hidden neurons 10 No. of hidden neurons 18 No. of hidden neurons 20
paramete Training Validatio Testing Trainin Validatio Testing Training Validatio Testing
MSE 0.002 0.007 0.012 0.001 0.006 0.010 0.001 0.009 0.009
RMSE 0.044 0.084 0.109 0.031 0.075 0.102 0.037 0.095 0.094
MAPE 4.624 9.509 13.830 3.198 8.825 12.237 3.854 11.093 9.845
AAD 4.615 9.331 12.523 3.221 8.515 11.466 3.895 9.575 9.873
2
R 0.829 0.418 0.389 0.923 0.584 0.510 0.899 0.495 0.079
COV 6.077 11.621 14.949 4.270 10.355 14.378 5.140 13.622 13.132
In Table 1, the data corresponding to hidden layers 10, 18, and 20 only are shown. The
hidden layer with 18 neurons had the least MSE and MAPE especially in training and
validation of all the alternatives. As a result, the final configuration 10-18-1 (number of input
parameters - number of neurons in the hidden layer (HN) - number of output parameters) of
NN had been adopted for the model. The weights of the links and biases of the neurons of
developed neural network are listed in Table 2.
5. The simplified closed-form formula can be obtained and presented from the developed NN. It
can predict the output. The closed-form expression needs the values of inputs, weights of the
links between the neurons in different layers, and biases of output or input neurons (Tadesse
et al. 2012).The closed-form formula can predict safety climate based on the value of
determinants of safety climate.
6. Absolute percentage deviation (APD) is a measure to validate prediction of the developed
model. It is the positive ratio of difference between actual and predicted performance to
actual performance of the developed model. Authors collected 12 additional responses (In
Construction Research Congress 2014 ©ASCE 2014 1866

addition to the 200 responses) and predicted safety climate through the model. The APD was
computed for each of the 12 samples as shown in Table 3.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The ANN model had been developed based on feed forward back propagation algorithm
to predict safety climate. As a rule of thumb, the numbers of hidden layer neurons vary between
the number of input layer neurons and twice of them (Berry and Linoff 1997). Therefore, for the
training, several trials were conducted with different numbers of neurons in the hidden layer
starting from 10 (equal to number of input neurons) and increasing up to 20 (twice input
neurons) beside checking the mean square error (MSE), root mean square error (RMSE), mean
absolute percentage error (MAPE), average absolute deviation (AAD), correlation coefficient
(R2), and coefficient of variation (COV) of training, validation, and testing data sets shown in
Table 2.
Figure 1 shows an artificial neural network with 10 input neurons (determinants), one
output neuron (safety climate), and in- between 18 hidden neurons. The interconnect weights of
input-hidden layers and hidden-output layers as well as biases are generated and presented in
Table 2. The closed-form formula can be presented which predicts the safety climate. It requires
the values of weights and biases as shown in Table 2. Table 3 shows the comparison of the actual
and predicted performance for the model. The absolute percentage deviation (APD) remains in
the permissible range, and so the model predicts reasonably well. Thus, safety officer, project
manager, and project executive can use it to evaluate and predict safety climate on construction
sites and thereby managing safety effectively.
The developed model predicts the safety climate on construction projects considering ten
constructs of safety climate. Sensitivity analysis is useful to study the impact of each input on the
output of a model. For carrying out the sensitivity analysis for a variable Im, the input values of
all the ten constructs were kept at zero (which represented the statement ‘neither agree nor
disagree’) and the value of output was noted. Now the value of the construct Im was varied to +1
(agree), +2 (strongly agree), -1 (disagree), and -2 (strongly disagree) keeping the remaining nine
constructs at their ‘0’ values and the change in output values (increase, decrease, or insignificant
change) were noted.

Table 2.Weight Values and Biases for Neural Network (10-18-1)

Input to hidden layer Hidden layer

Weight/Bias to output
Connection
w1,ihk w2,ihk w3,ihk w4,ihk w5,ihk w6,ihk w7,ihk w8,ihk w9,ihk ih
w10, biask wkho,1 biaso
k

1 -0.74 -0.34 -0.99 -0.44 -0.47 0.32 1.00 -0.98 -0.77 -0.46 4.36 -0.51
Number 2 -0.07 -0.86 1.25 -0.45 0.52 -1.32 0.68 -0.19 0.43 -0.88 -2.77 -0.69
of 3 0.33 0.06 0.46 -0.44 0.59 0.30 1.45 1.08 0.32 0.57 -4.52 -1.46
hidden 4 -0.51 0.17 -0.83 -0.70 1.22 -0.24 1.21 0.57 -1.26 0.00 2.77 1.12 3.04
layer
neuron 5 -0.89 0.68 0.23 0.31 0.66 1.30 -0.49 1.03 -0.08 0.23 0.96 -0.39
(k ) 6 -1.20 0.42 0.19 0.53 -0.42 -0.70 -0.90 -0.37 0.09 1.17 1.96 -0.49
7 0.68 -0.87 -0.80 -0.75 -0.34 -0.50 -0.60 0.41 0.64 0.06 -0.77 -1.02
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8 0.94 -0.91 -0.72 -0.23 1.03 -0.75 0.90 -0.49 0.33 1.11 -0.47 0.88
9 -0.01 0.05 0.88 0.07 -0.28 -0.69 0.64 -0.18 1.18 0.72 -0.69 -0.26
10 0.68 0.15 -0.79 -0.27 0.37 -0.66 0.71 -0.97 -0.38 -0.04 0.18 -0.93
11 1.11 -1.09 0.69 0.31 -0.31 -1.33 0.67 -0.21 0.49 -0.03 0.71 0.33
12 0.43 -0.79 -0.59 0.33 0.93 0.85 0.09 -0.80 0.96 0.25 1.46 0.52
13 -0.01 -0.93 0.73 -0.65 -0.18 0.59 -0.56 -0.39 -0.25 -0.08 2.38 -2.43
14 -0.13 0.36 -1.03 0.25 0.89 -0.82 -1.08 0.43 -0.82 0.32 -1.65 0.39
15 -0.59 0.56 -1.56 1.12 1.00 -1.09 0.31 0.83 0.22 0.54 -2.48 -1.85
16 -0.37 0.91 0.08 -0.39 0.03 -0.35 1.20 0.92 -0.17 0.74 -3.91 0.64
17 0.13 0.65 0.97 0.56 0.79 1.10 -0.66 -0.80 0.41 -1.00 3.07 -1.11
18 1.10 -0.54 -0.29 0.49 0.23 -1.04 1.26 0.37 -0.14 -0.72 4.29 0.97

This process was repeated for all the constructs of safety climate. The result of sensitivity
analysis is not presented in this paper due to space limitations. From the sensitivity analysis
results, it was noticed that out of ten safety constructs, commitment, supervisory environment,
personnel appreciation of risk, and competence impact positively on safety climate. Mohamed
(2002) also found significant roles of these factors in developing a positive safety climate in his
research. Commitment indicates the perceptions of management’s commitment to health and
safety issues in an organization. The finding is also in line with the finding of Zohar (1980) and
the importance of managers being committed to safety issues at projects is re-emphasized. The
success of a safety management system program relies upon the ability of supervisory personnel
to ensure that the program is carried out during daily operations.
The presence of a safety and relationship oriented supervisors brings improvement in the
safety climate (Mohamed 2002; Fang et al. 2006). Attitudes towards safety have been found to
be associated with personnel perception of risks and individuals’ willingness to take risks.
Laukkanen (1999) found less stress in workers who were experienced and skilled in their works.
The output of the model also gets verified from the study of Flin et al. (2000) and Fang et al.
(2006) that competence is a significant construct of safety climate.
It is observed that the output of the model (safety climate) is not much fluctuated when
responses on communication, supportive environment and workers’ involvement are varying
from disagreement (strongly) to agreement (strongly). It shows that they do not contribute much
to develop positive safety climate, though they are considered important constructs of safety
climate in previous researches (HSE 1999; Mohamed 2002; Fang et al. 2006).
It is possible that the safety climate constructs, despite having a positive causal
relationship to the network output, are simultaneously related to unidentified confound factors
that are negatively related to the network output. It is examined that more responses on each of
these constructs; safety rules and procedures, appraisal of physical work environment and work
hazard, and work pressure towards positive (strongly agreement) side reduce safety climate score
and vice versa in the model. In other words, these constructs have negative influence on safety
climate. Even Mohamed (2002) did not find a positive link of work pressure to safety climate.
But, it is a contradictory finding of this research that safety rules and procedures, appraisal of
physical work environment and work hazard are associated negatively in development of safety
climate. This finding reflects that respondents may have perceptions that current safety rules and
procedures and appraisal of physical work environment and work hazards are inappropriate,
Construction Research Congress 2014 ©ASCE 2014 1868

ineffective and irrelevant to safety climate. They may endorse statements of safety climate
poorly; when their responses on these constructs may be towards more positive (agree) and vice
versa. It is difficult to get support for this finding from previous researches.
This study adopted the same constructs from the study of Mohamed (2002) without
conducting factor analysis (FA). Choudhry et al. (2009) found that the same safety climate
factors would not apply to all organizations. In a broad range, it is not necessary that a same set
of constructs of safety climate may be relevant and applicable to another industry or a region. In
fact, safety culture is dynamic in nature, and it varies from place to place also.

Table 3. Comparison of Actual and Predicted Performance of Safe Climate

Actual Predicted Actual Predicted

Sample APD Sample APD
safety safety safety safety
No. (%) No. (%)
climate climate climate climate
1. 0.59 0.68 13.24 7. 0.75 0.69 8.70
2. 0.72 0.75 4.00 8. 0.67 0.71 5.63
3. 0.66 0.69 4.35 9. 0.78 0.72 8.33
4. 0.65 0.68 4.41 10. 0.70 0.71 1.41
5. 0.80 0.75 6.67 11. 0.71 0.72 0.74
6. 0.70 0.69 1.45 12. 0.70 0.68 2.94

CONCLUSION
This research developed a robust model based on ANN to predict and evaluate the
safety climate on construction projects considering ten constructs of safety climate. By making
use of the model, this research found that commitment, supervisory environment, personnel
appreciation of risk and competence had significant roles on safety climate. Contrary to the
expectations, this study found that safety rules and procedures, appraisal of physical work and
work hazard, and work pressure had negative influence on safety climate. The rest of constructs:
communication, supportive environment and workers’ involvement were found unbiased in
development of safety climate. Therefore, the findings from this research desire project
executives to focus on positive constructs of safety climate instead of all ten constructs. These
positive constructs are more suitable to study the safety climate in Indian construction industry.
The main implication of this study is that practitioners can evaluate the safety climate of the
particular project and compare with another projects or organizations easily. Researchers can use
this model to quantify safety climate and study its impact on other factors like safety budget,
safety outcomes etc.
This research has a few limitations. As mentioned earlier, this study adopted same safety climate
constructs used by Mohamed (2002) without factor analysis (FA).Self-report measures may
exaggerate safety climate of a project, so it is a clear limitation to this study. The responses
collected were broadly from individuals working in middle management for this study, but
responses from persons working in top management, contractors, and their workers can be
accommodated to get a better picture of safety climate. These limitations may be addressed in a
future study.
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