Citation

Ilangkumaran M, Karthikeyan M, Ramachandran T, Boopathiraja M, Kirubakaran B. Safety Sci. 2015; 72: 133-143.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssci.2014.08.011

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A person working in extreme hot environment is at greater risk of heat-related disorders and safety problems. Protection of health and safety needs to evaluate the risk and warning rate of hot environment without compromising productivity of the organization. In this paper, a novel hybrid technique was proposed for assessing the work safety in hot environments using multi criteria decision making (MCDM) technique. The proposed model involves analytic network process (ANP) and linguistic fuzzy approach. The ANP approach is used to compute the weights of evaluation factors and triangular fuzzy numbers are used to handle imprecision and uncertainty during the decision making process. In the present study, a total of three main factors and ten sub-factors are considered for the evaluation process. A real case study example is conducted to ascertain the effectiveness of the proposed model. The results show that the criteria "worker" obtained over-all percentage of 64.8%; whereas, "environment" and "work criteria" was 27.8% and 7.4%, respectively. The safety performance of hot environment falls between medium and good. However, the safety grade and warning rate for work is II and I, respectively.