A Novel Risk Assessment Approach for Open-Cast Coal Mines Using Hybrid MCDM Models with Interval Type-2 Fuzzy Sets: A Case Study in Türkiye

Abstract

Mining is a high-risk industry where occupational accidents are common due to its complex nature. Therefore, providing a more holistic and dynamic risk assessment framework is essential to identify and minimize the potential risks and enhance safety measures. Unfortunately, traditional risk assessment methods have limitations and shortcomings, such as uncertainty, differences in experience backgrounds, and insufficiency to articulate the opinions of experts. In this paper, a novel risk assessment method precisely for such cases in the mining sector is proposed, applied, and compared with traditional methods. The objective of this study is to determine the risk scores of Turkish Coal Enterprises, based on non-fatal occupational accidents, which operates eight large-scale open-cast coal mine enterprises in Türkiye. The causes of the accidents were categorized into 25 sub-criteria under 6 main criteria. The risk scores for these criteria were computed using the Pythagorean fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (PFAHP) method. The first shift (8–16 h) (0.6341) for the shift category is ranked highest out of the 25 sub-risk factors, followed by maintenance personnel (0.5633) for the occupation category; the open-cast mining area (0.5524) for the area category, the 45–57 age range (0.5279) for employee age category, and the mining machine (0.4247) for the reason category, respectively. The methodologies proposed in this study not only identify the most important risk factors in enterprises, but also provide a mechanism for risk-based rankings of enterprises by their calculated risk scores. The enterprises were risk-based ranked with the fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS) method and Paksoy approach based on interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs). The findings indicate that the first three risk score rankings of enterprises are the same for both approaches. To examine the consistency of the applied methods, sensitivity analyses were performed. The results of the study also indicate that the proposed approaches are recommended for effective use in the mining sector due to their ease of application compared to other methods and their dynamic nature in the risk assessment process.