Yang, K (2018) Sensing workers' responsive behaviors for identifying safety hazards in construction. PhD thesis, University of Nebraska - Lincoln, USA.
Abstract
The prevention of occupational injuries is one of the most important management tasks in the construction industry because of the labor-intensive nature of construction work. The prevention of injury is therefore beneficial for maintaining productivity levels and reducing related compensation costs. However, many safety hazards remain unidentified due to limited resources for visual inspection and the dynamic work environment of the construction site. Therefore, an additional approach that can identify safety hazards is necessary to address current limitations and prevent occupational injuries. Recent advances in wearable sensing technology make it possible to collect and analyze workers' responsive behaviors during the construction processes, which provides an opportunity to identify safety hazards. This dissertation presents a series of research studies that analyzed different types of responsive behaviors caused by safety hazards. Specifically, this research focused on measuring and analyzing workers' balance conditions, abnormalities in workers' walking patterns, and divergence of their trajectory regarding the existence of safety hazards in construction environments. The wearable inertial measurement unit and the ultra-wideband location tracking system are used to capture workers' bodily responses and specific locations. This study investigated the feasibility of proposed hazard-sensing techniques and examined the performance of such techniques with experiments in different construction work environments. The analysis results demonstrate the potential of using developed techniques for hazard identification and present an opportunity for monitoring worker behavior. The major contribution of this dissertation is the development of analytical models and tools that enable identification of safety hazards by measuring the responsive behaviors of workers. Thereby, the current challenges of hazard identification can be addressed with new technology that allows the construction safety manager access to an alternative method for monitoring a construction site. Also, proposed techniques have the potential to be combined with other visualization tools (e.g., building information modeling) that can facilitate communication regarding hazardous conditions between various project participants.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Ahn, C R and Stentz, T L |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | hazards; measurement; construction safety; construction site; injury; building information model; building information modeling; communication; monitoring; productivity; safety; visualization; experiment |
| Index terms: | productivity, ultra-wideband, hazard identification, building information modelling, new technology, prevention, construction industry, compensation, dissertation, monitoring, work environment, construction work, construction site, experiment, visual inspection, manager, injury, visualization, construction safety, analytical model, construction process |
| Subjects: | design practice, management, environmental health, information systems, industry analysis, health conditions and diseases, dispute resolution, control systems, data collection methods, work location, financial risk, theoretical framing, building construction, networking, practitioner, research dissemination and communication, professional practice, innovation and technology management, operations management |
| Topics: | Roles and Professions, Cost Management, Business Strategy, Research Practice, Organizational Design, Site Management, Digital Applications, Design Practice, Sustainability, Health and Safety, Engineering Principles, Project Management, Legal Issues |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
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