Background: Work-related accidents result in human suffering and economic losses and are considered as a major health problem worldwide, especially in the economically developing world.
Objectives: To introduce seasonal autoregressive moving average (ARIMA) models for time series analysis of work-related accident data for workers insured by the Iranian Social Security Organization (ISSO) between 2000 and 2011.
Methods: In this retrospective study, all insured people experiencing at least one work-related accident during a 10-year period were included in the analyses. We used Box-Jenkins modeling to develop a time series model of the total number of accidents.
Results: There was an average of 1476 accidents per month (1476·05±458·77, mean±SD). The final ARIMA (p,d,q) (P,D,Q)s model for fitting to data was: ARIMA(1,1,1)×(0,1,1)12 consisting of the first ordering of the autoregressive, moving average and seasonal moving average parameters with 20·942 mean absolute percentage error (MAPE).
Conclusions: The final model showed that time series analysis of ARIMA models was useful for forecasting the number of work-related accidents in Iran. In addition, the forecasted number of work-related accidents for 2011 explained the stability of occurrence of these accidents in recent years, indicating a need for preventive occupational health and safety policies such as safety inspection.
Keywords: ARIMA modeling; Iran; Time series analysis; Work-related accidents.