Characterizing time series of near-miss accidents in metro construction via complex network theory

Abstract Although theoretical analysis to near-miss accidents in construction industry has been frequently advocated, the dynamic and temporal characters of time series of near-miss accidents remain unclear, which could not be easily uncovered by analytical representation approaches. To address this gap, the characteristics of the near-miss accident time series and the mechanism underlying the near-miss accidents in metro construction have been explored from the perspective of complex network theory. Mapping time series into a complex network with visibility graph algorithm, temporal characters and dynamics of inter-event time series of near-miss accidents has been revealed through the analysis and discussion of near-miss accident data from the city of Wuhan, China mainland metro construction. All degree distributions of the construct networks, followed by power law, demonstrate that the inter-event time series of near-miss accidents are scale-free. Moreover, the results show they all have small-world features and are highly clustered into hierarchical structures, indicating that the complex phenomenon are generally existed. With the analysis on the near-miss accident time series via complex network theory, practical insights into near-miss accidents and safety management in metro construction are also proposed.