Collective sensing of workers' gait patterns to identify fall hazards in construction

Current hazard-identification efforts in construction mostly rely on human judgment, a reality that leaves a significant number of hazards unidentified or not well-assessed. This situation highlights a need for enhancing hazard-identification capabilities in dynamic and unpredictable construction en...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Automation in construction 2017-10, Vol.82, p.166-178
Main Authors: Yang, Kanghyeok, Ahn, Changbum R., Vuran, Mehmet C., Kim, Hyunsoo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abnormalities
Construction accidents & safety
Construction safety
Falls
Gait
Gait analysis
Hazard assessment
Hazard identification
Occupational hazards
Sensors
Slips, trips, and falls
Wearable computers
Wearable inertial measurement units
Wearable technology
Working conditions
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Current hazard-identification efforts in construction mostly rely on human judgment, a reality that leaves a significant number of hazards unidentified or not well-assessed. This situation highlights a need for enhancing hazard-identification capabilities in dynamic and unpredictable construction environments. Given the fact that hazards cause disruptions in workers' behaviors and responses, capturing such disruptions offers opportunities for identifying hazards. This study proposes a collective sensing approach that senses and assesses workers' gait abnormalities in order to identify physical fall hazards in a construction jobsite. Laboratory experiments simulating an ironworkers' working environment were designed and conducted to examine the feasibility of the proposed approach. A wearable inertial measurement unit (WIMU) attached to a subject's ankle collected kinematic gait data. The results indicated that the aggregated gait abnormality score from multiple subjects have a strong correlation with the existence of installed fall hazards such as obstacles and slippery surfaces. This outcome highlights the opportunity for future devices to use workers' abnormal gait responses to reveal safety hazards in construction environments. •A hazard identification approach based on worker response is proposed.•Gait abnormality of each stride is assessed from wearable inertial measurement unit.•Collective gait abnormalities of multiple workers are quantified in each location.•A strong correlation between collective abnormalities and hazard locations is found,
ISSN:0926-5805
1872-7891
DOI:10.1016/j.autcon.2017.04.010