The Mechanism of how Design Failures cause Unsafe Behavior: The Cognitive Reliability and Error Analysis Method (CREAM)

Studies have indicated that prevention through design is the most economic and effective approach to enhance safety. Although the importance of prevention through design has been argued for many years, the mechanism between design and unsafe behavior is still unclear, which impedes the promotion of design for safety. This study aims to reduce accidents in the construction industry and promote safety design by understanding the mechanism through design leads to unsafe behavior and quantify the probability that design failure will cause unsafe behavior. Real inspection data were combined with a Bayesian network, and Bayesian parameter learning was used to identify how design lead to unsafe behavior and calculate the probability of the unsafe behavior. The result highlighted the significance of engineering design specify the mechanism of design on behavior, which outlined a theoretical foundation for prevention through design.