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Contributing factors to 621 occupational fatal falls have been identified with respect to the victim's individual factors, the fall site, company size, and cause of fall. Individual factors included age, gender, experience, and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). Accident scenarios were derived from accident reports. Significant linkages were found between causes for the falls and accident events. Falls from scaffold staging were associated with a lack of complying scaffolds and bodily action. Falls through existing floor openings were associated with unguarded openings, inappropriate protections, or the removal of protections. Falls from building girders or other structural steel were associated with bodily actions and improper use of PPE. Falls from roof edges were associated with bodily actions and being pulled down by a hoist, object or tool. Falls through roof surfaces were associated with lack of complying scaffolds. Falls from ladders were associated with overexertion and unusual control and the use of unsafe ladders and tools. Falls down stairs or steps were associated with unguarded openings. Falls while jumping to a lower floor and falls through existing roof openings were associated with poor work practices. Primary and secondary prevention measures can be used to prevent falls or to mitigate the consequences of falls and are suggested for each type of accident. Primary prevention measures would include fixed barriers, such as handrails, guardrails, surface opening protections (hole coverings), crawling boards/planks, and strong roofing materials. Secondary protection measures would include travel restraint systems (safety belt), fall arrest systems (safety harness), and fall containment systems (safety nets). Keywords: Fatal falls; Falls from height; Construction ergonomics; Construction site safety

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2004.09.011 Byline: Chia-Fen Chi (a), Tin-Chang Chang (a), Hsin-I Ting (b) Keywords: Fatal falls; Falls from height; Construction ergonomics; Construction site safety Abstract: Contributing factors to 621 occupational fatal falls have been identified with respect to the victim's individual factors, the fall site, company size, and cause of fall. Individual factors included age, gender, experience, and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). Accident scenarios were derived from accident reports. Significant linkages were found between causes for the falls and accident events. Falls from scaffold staging were associated with a lack of complying scaffolds and bodily action. Falls through existing floor openings were associated with unguarded openings, inappropriate protections, or the removal of protections. Falls from building girders or other structural steel were associated with bodily actions and improper use of PPE. Falls from roof edges were associated with bodily actions and being pulled down by a hoist, object or tool. Falls through roof surfaces were associated with lack of complying scaffolds. Falls from ladders were associated with overexertion and unusual control and the use of unsafe ladders and tools. Falls down stairs or steps were associated with unguarded openings. Falls while jumping to a lower floor and falls through existing roof openings were associated with poor work practices. Primary and secondary prevention measures can be used to prevent falls or to mitigate the consequences of falls and are suggested for each type of accident. Primary prevention measures would include fixed barriers, such as handrails, guardrails, surface opening protections (hole coverings), crawling boards/planks, and strong roofing materials. Secondary protection measures would include travel restraint systems (safety belt), fall arrest systems (safety harness), and fall containment systems (safety nets). Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Industrial Management, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43 Keelung Road, Section 4, Taipei, Taiwan 106 (b) CTCI Corporation Article History: Received 5 March 2004; Accepted 13 September 2004

The purpose of this research was to develop a new model to describe and predict a computerized task. AutoCAD was utilized as the experimental tool to collect operating procedure and time data at a keystroke level for a computer aided design (CAD) task. Six undergraduate students participated in the experiment. They were required to complete one simple and one complex engineering drawing. A model which characterized the task performance by software commands and predicted task execution time using keystroke-level model operators was proposed and applied to the analysis of the dialogue data. This task parameter model adopted software commands, e.g. LINE, OFFSET in AutoCAD, to describe the function of a task unit and used up to five parameters to indicate the number of keystrokes, chosen function for a command, and ways of starting and ending a command. Each task unit in the task parameter model can be replaced by a number of primitive operators as in the keystroke level model to predict the task execution time. The observed task execution times of all task units were found to be highly correlated with the task execution times predicted by the keystroke level model. Therefore, the task parameter model was proved to be a usable analytical tool for evaluating the human-computer interface (HCI). Keywords: task analysis, GOMS model, computer-aided design (CAD)

Optimization models of human visual search performance can be constructed that assume that the human operator maximizes an objective function, subject to given constraints. Two experiments were performed to validate [...]