Analysis of bus fires using interpretative structural modeling

There has been a worldwide growing public concern regarding transit bus fires, mainly because of their association with severe loss of human life and property. As a result, numerous studies have been carried out to investigate the causes, factors, and features of such accidents, along with research focusing on the simulation of bus fire scenarios. However, a detailed analysis on the causes of bus fires and the inter-relationships of risk factors is lacking. This study identified 17 risk factors associated with bus fires through an analysis of accident records from China using the Delphi approach. An integrated interpretative structural modeling (ISM) was adopted to explore the interactions among risk factors associated with bus fires, providing a useful hierarchy of risk factors whose individual relationships are unambiguous but whose group relationships are too complex to organize intuitively. This can help practitioners better understand risk dependencies and prioritize risk mitigation efforts. Results show that a lack of safety education and safety knowledge popularization and inadequate laws and regulations are the two most important risk factors associated with bus fires. Drivers also play an important role in preventing accidents. The analysis can be extended to risk analysis in other types of accidents, i.e., railway accidents and coach accidents.