Korea Institute of Design Promotion Unveils Industrial Safety Design Roadmap

25 Accident Types Reclassified into Five Major Mechanism Groups

The Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP) announced on August 6 that it has developed an "Industrial Safety Design Roadmap" based on big data analysis to enhance safety in domestic industrial sites.

This roadmap is intended to move away from the traditional approach of formulating measures only after major accidents occur, offering instead a macro perspective of overall industrial safety. By using big data, the roadmap identifies priority areas requiring urgent attention and seeks to systematically develop and disseminate safety design solutions in stages. The plan includes a customized modular strategy and preventative standards that guide workers to intuitively recognize risks and evacuate accordingly.

KIDP reclassified the 25 accident types from the National Statistical Portal (KOSIS) into five groups according to their spatial and physical contexts: ▲G1 (fall, overturn, drop) ▲G2 (entrapment, entanglement, collision) ▲G3 (collapse, fire, explosion) ▲G4 (hazardous material exposure and disease) ▲G5 (emergency exceptions and lack of management), and established criteria for safety design interventions.

Image related to the Industrial Safety Design Roadmap. Korea Institute of Design Promotion

To establish effective guidelines, KIDP conducted a comprehensive survey—together with Professor Lee Hyunseong's research team at the Public Design Research Center, Hongik University—of 641,007 macro-level KOSIS statistics and 3,487 accident cases from the last five years (2020–2024) in four major industries (manufacturing, construction, shipbuilding, and service) listed on the Industrial Safety Portal.

After review and verification by experts in design, industrial and human factors engineering, and safety engineering, KIDP developed design strategies for short-, medium-, and long-term phases. In particular, the research team applied the "3R Framework" (Readiness, Response, Recovery) to 204 subcategories of accidents, yielding 612 detailed design items. Of these, the team selected 30 key tasks with high urgency and potential for broad implementation.

The 30 key tasks will be promoted as roadmaps for the short-term (13 tasks), medium-term (10 tasks), and long-term (7 tasks), taking into account their ripple effects and field acceptance. Short-term tasks focus on areas where immediate improvements are possible, such as standardizing colors and signage and separating paths in hazardous zones. The medium- and long-term tasks focus on building and institutionalizing preventive safety infrastructure using advanced technologies such as AI-based dynamic signage, smart sensor integration, and digital twins.

Kang Yoonju, President of KIDP, stated, "KIDP has supported safety design for 36 companies to date, confirming high satisfaction and accident prevention effectiveness. However, to expand these achievements to the country's more than 500,000 manufacturing businesses, bolder government interest and investment are essential."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.