Safety risk assessment of metro construction under epistemic uncertainty: An integrated framework using credal networks and the EDAS method.

Safety risk assessment of metro construction is necessary to prevent catastrophic accidents that may cause heavy financial losses and casualties. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive risk assessment framework that incorporates credal networks (CNs) and an improved evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) method. First, the CN model can intuitively demonstrate dependencies between risk factors, capture the epistemic uncertainty of expert judgement in the form of imprecise probability, and propagate the uncertainty quickly and accurately with advanced inference algorithms. In addition, the improved EDAS method can be used to comprehensively identify critical risk factors with multiple indicators, including the nature of the risk itself and company capabilities, being taken into account. Moreover, to effectively aggregate expert opinions, a weighting method that integrates subjective weights and similarity-based objective weights is provided. A case study on the safety risk analysis of metro construction in China verified the feasibility of the framework. The proposed approach can be extended to other similar projects to help engineers systematically assess risks during the life cycle of the project to ensure the safety of metro construction. • A novel safety risk assessment framework for metro construction is proposed. • As an extension of the BN, the CN can capture epistemic uncertainty. • The imprecise probability can be propagate through GL2U algorithm. • The improved EDAS can address multiple criteria under heterogeneous information. • A weighting method that integrated subjective and objective weight is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]