Prioritization and Comparison of Factors Affecting Occupational Accidents in Manufacturing Sector Using Interval Valued Pythagorean Fuzzy Sets

The rise in industrial activities has led to an increase in occupational accidents, which significantly impact employee health and the sustainability of businesses. Currently, around 270 million occupational accidents occur annually. Therefore, occupational safety applications are of great importance. Conventional risk assessment techniques frequently neglect to evaluate intricate, multidimensional, and uncertain occupational safety factors, which leads to underestimating their significance. For this reason, the objective of the study is to identify and prioritize the factors influencing occupational accidents in the manufacturing sector to mitigate such incidents. For this purpose, the factors influencing occupational accidents are classified into five sub-categories: human factors, management factors, process factors, machinery/equipment factors, and environmental factors. To better represent uncertainty, data from five different experts were analyzed with the Interval-Valued Pythagorean Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (IVPF-AHP) method. The relationships between the Interval-Valued Pythagorean Fuzzy DEMATEL (IVPF-DEMATEL) and the factors influencing occupational accidents are elucidated. The findings identify which factors are more important in occupational safety strategies and provide an innovative approach to decision makers in an uncertain environment like occupational safety.