An ontology of control measures for fall from height in the construction industry

Abstract

Fall from heights (FFH) has been a major contributor towards both minor and major workrelated injuries in the construction industry. In order to facilitate knowledge reuse/sharing and the development of knowledge-based systems for working at height, this paper aims to develop a lightweight ontology of control measures for fall from height (FFH) in the construction industry. The fall-from-heights ontology (FFH-Onto) is developed based on a generic ontological framework which consists of nine concepts: actor, task, building element, hazard, construction method, constraint, safety resource, hazard control measure, and residual risk. These nine concepts are categorized into three main parts: problem, context, and solution. The FFH-Onto can be used to facilitate knowledge reuse and sharing among the end-users (e.g., designer, engineer, safety professional, supervisor, and site manager. It also forms an important basis for developing knowledge-based systems for automated and intelligent fall protection engineering and management in the construction industry. Future efforts can be made to upgrade the proposed lightweight ontology to a heavyweight one which includes axioms and constraints. In addition, ontologies of other key hazards (e.g., struck by objects) are to be developed.