Risk Assessment of Miners’ Unsafe Behaviors: A Case Study of Gas Explosion Accidents in Coal Mine, China

TLDR

China’s coal mining sector faces frequent accidents, with gas explosions being the most common. The study aims to identify factors influencing miners’ unsafe behaviors to enhance safety management and reduce gas‑explosion risk. The authors analyzed 200 gas‑explosion incidents, extracted unsafe behaviors across four work types, identified influencing factors, and built a probabilistic risk model using Monte Carlo simulation. Ventilation workers pose the greatest unsafe‑behavior risk, followed by gas‑prevention/fire‑extinguishing, with blasting and electrician workers at lower risk.

Abstract

China's coal mine production situation is grim and various types of accidents occur frequently, and gas explosion accidents are the highest incidence of coal mine accidents. The authors selected 200 gas explosion accidents of coal mine enterprises in recent years, and extracted a large number of workers' unsafe behaviors. Meanwhile, four working types related to gas explosion accidents were obtained, namely ventilation, gas prevention and fire extinguishing, blasting, and electrician. This article listed some influencing factors of unsafe behaviors and corrected the probability of unsafe behaviors. In addition, a probabilistic risk assessment model was established, and the Monte Carlo method was used to analyze the risks caused by unsafe behaviors of various working types. The results show that the risk of unsafe behaviors caused by the ventilation working type is the highest, followed by gas prevention and fire extinguishing, and finally blasting and electrician. This paper studies the influencing factors of miners' unsafe behaviors from the perspective of behavior, guarantees effectively the safety management of coal mine enterprises, and lays a foundation for studying unsafe behaviors related to coal mine gas explosions.