Modeling Dynamic Risk Perception Using Large Language Model (LLM) Agents

Abstract

Background: Understanding how accident risk escalates during unfolding industrial events is essential for developing intelligent safety systems. This study proposes a large language model (LLM)-based framework that simulates human-like risk reasoning over sequential accident precursors. Methods: Using 100 investigation reports from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB), two Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) agents were developed: (1) an Accident Precursor Extractor to identify and classify time-ordered events, and (2) a Subjective Probability Estimator to update perceived accident likelihood as precursors unfold. Results: The subjective accident probability increases near-linearly, with an average escalation of 8.0% ± 0.9% per precursor ((Formula presented.)). A consistent tipping point occurs at the fourth precursor, marking a perceptual shift to high-risk awareness. Across 90 analyzed cases, Agent 1 achieved 0.88 precision and 0.84 recall, while Agent 2 reproduced human-like probabilistic reasoning within ±0.08 of expert baselines. The magnitude of escalation differed across precursor types. Organizational factors were perceived as the highest risk (median = 0.56), followed by human error (median = 0.47). Technical and environmental factors demonstrated comparatively smaller effects. Conclusions: These findings confirm that LLM agents can emulate Bayesian-like updating in dynamic risk perception, offering a scalable and explainable foundation for adaptive, sequence-aware safety monitoring in safety-critical systems.