Large Language Models for Construction Risk Classification: A Comparative Study

Risk identification is a critical concern in the construction industry. In recent years, there has been a growing trend of applying artificial intelligence (AI) tools to detect risks from unstructured data sources such as news articles, social media, contracts, and financial reports. The rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs) in text analysis, summarization, and generation offers promising opportunities to improve construction risk identification. This study conducts a comprehensive benchmarking of natural language processing (NLP) and LLM techniques for automating the classification of risk items into a generic risk category. Twelve model configurations are evaluated, ranging from classical NLP pipelines using TF-IDF and Word2Vec to advanced transformer-based models such as BERT and GPT-4 with zero-shot, instruction, and few-shot prompting strategies. The results reveal that LLMs, particularly GPT-4 with few-shot prompts, achieve a competitive performance (F1 = 0.81) approaching that of the best classical model (BERT + SVM; F1 = 0.86), all without the need for training data. Moreover, LLMs exhibit a more balanced performance across imbalanced risk categories, showcasing their adaptability in data-sparse settings. These findings contribute theoretically by positioning LLMs as scalable plug-and-play alternatives to NLP pipelines, offering practical value by highlighting how LLMs can support early-stage project planning and risk assessment in contexts where labeled data and expert resources are limited.