Scenario-Based Framework for Economic Evaluation of Safety Technology Adoption in Construction

Abstract

Despite growing interest in emerging safety technologies in the construction industry, their adoption in practice remains limited due to the lack of structured quantitative models that evaluate the trade-off between safety performance improvements and investment costs. Consequently, it remains unclear under which conditions safety technology adoption can achieve economic justification. To address this limitation, this study proposes the economic evaluation of safety technology adoption (ECOSTAT) framework, which integrates net value calculations, Monte Carlo simulation, and scenario analysis. To account for accident-prevention benefits in this evaluation, this study considers five cost components arising from construction accidents. These components include settlement costs, legal costs, accident investigation costs, interrupted construction costs, and fines. Among them, settlement costs, interrupted construction costs, and fines exhibit substantial variability depending on accident occurrence and characteristics and are therefore modeled using probability distributions. The applicability of the ECOSTAT framework is demonstrated through case studies of two construction project types: a building project and a railway infrastructure project. The results indicate that as total construction costs increase, the minimum accident-prevention efficiency required for economic feasibility decreases, reflecting economies of scale. For example, in the railway project, increasing total construction costs from $200 million to $350 million reduced the required accident-prevention efficiency from 5.36% to 3.95% at an investment ratio of 0.01%. Furthermore, the ECOSTAT framework is implemented as a web-based decision-support system that enables real-time evaluation of economic feasibility by allowing users to adjust project parameters.