Han, Y; Yin, Z; Zhang, J; Jin, R and Yang, T (2020) Eye-tracking experimental study investigating the influence factors of construction safety hazard recognition. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 146(8): 04020091, ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Construction site accidents can be reduced if hazards leading to accidents are correctly and promptly detected by employees. Proactive safety measures such as safety perception and safety detection capability of employees play an important role in improving the safety performance. This study was initiated by three research questions related to (1) the measurement indicators of employees' cognitive load in recognizing safety hazards; (2) site condition factors (e.g., brightness) that can affect subjects' cognitive load; and (3) the quantification of the effects of these site factors on cognitive load. An eye-tracking experimental approach was adopted by recruiting a total of 55 students from construction management or other civil engineering disciplines to visually search hazards in 20 given site scenes. These site scenes were defined by a combination of three different categories, namely distinctiveness of hazards, site brightness, and tidiness. Quantitative measurements of experimental participants' visual search patterns were obtained from data captured by the eye-tracking apparatus. Based on metrics related to experimental participants' fixation, visual search track, and attention map, these measurements were computed to evaluate participants' cognitive load in detecting hazards. Descriptive statistical comparisons analyzed these metrics under predefined categories of site conditions, i.e., distinctness versus obscurity/blurriness, brightness versus darkness, and tidiness versus messiness. The findings revealed that distinct site conditions reduced participants' time in saccades to search hazards but did not improve the accuracy rate of first fixation; messy sites with disorganized items increased participants' cognitive load in detecting hazards in terms of all five measurement items (i.e., accuracy rate of first fixation, fixation count, intersection coefficient, fixation duration, and fixation count in the attention center); the effect of increased brightness on-site needs further studies to determine the optimal balance of brightness level and allocation. Recommendations based on the findings were provided to enhance safety education in terms of site hazard distinctiveness, brightness, and housekeeping best practice. This study extended a few prior studies of adopting eye-tracking technology for safety monitoring by evaluating the impacts of site conditions on participants' cognitive load, which was linked to their hazard detection performance. The study provided insights for evaluating construction employees' hazard detection capabilities to enhance safety education. Future work is proposed to evaluate employees' safety hazard detection pattern under dynamic construction scenarios.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | cognitive load; construction safety; eye-tracking; hazard detection; safety education |
| Index terms: | experiment, accuracy, construction site accident, safety performance, construction safety, safety measures, quantification, construction employee, monitoring, best practice, duration |
| Subjects: | professional development, health safety and environment, health risk and incident analysis, environmental health, measurement and scaling, project controls, occupational health and safety management, practitioner, control systems, business, data collection methods |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Sustainability, Health and Safety, Business Strategy, Information Management, Research Practice, Site Management, Time Control |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here