Incorporating Worker Awareness in the Generation of Hazard Proximity Warnings

Area of Science:

• Construction Safety Engineering
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Wearable Technology

Background:

• Current proximity warning systems on construction sites often generate redundant alarms by not accounting for worker hazard awareness.
• This leads to alarm fatigue, where workers disable or ignore warnings, increasing injury risk.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an improved hazard proximity warning system for construction sites by integrating worker field-of-view as a proxy for hazard awareness.
• To reduce unnecessary and distracting alarms, thereby enhancing worker safety and system effectiveness.

Main Methods:

• Developed a rule-based model for warning generation.
• Conducted a virtual experiment to evaluate the integration of worker field-of-view in alarm generation.
• Implemented an improved system using wearable inertial measurement units and localization sensors for field applications.

Main Results:

• The integration of worker field-of-view into alarm generation was evaluated through a virtual experiment.
• An improved hazard proximity warning system was developed and tested in field applications.
• Case studies demonstrated the system's effectiveness in reducing distracting alarms.

Conclusions:

• The proposed system offers a novel approach to utilizing wearable sensors in construction safety.
• Incorporating worker awareness into hazard alarm generation can significantly reduce nuisance alarms.
• The system has the potential to improve overall safety performance on construction sites by minimizing distractions and alarm fatigue.