Perceived Risks Extended Safety Program Development for Construction Projects through Quantitative Hybrid Kinematic-electroencephalography Vigilance Recognition

Description

The construction industry is a labor-intensive industry that recruits the majority of manual workers in Hong Kong. Owing to its large employee population and reliance on manual operation, nearly one fourth of all workplace injuries and fatalities occur in the construction industry. Many studies reported that more than 70% of these accidents are related to human activities. However, it is extremely difficult to improve on-site safety due to the dynamic nature of the construction working environment and the unpredictable behavior of workers. Previously, researchers developed various technologies that focus on identifying site hazards and providing protective equipment such as radio-frequency identification for labor positioning, RGB-D cameras for labor activity detection, and biological sensors for labor monitoring. However, many studies reported that the major source of on-site accidents is the subjective unsafe behavior due to workers’ lack of sense of danger. Conventionally, the most widespread approach to raising workers’ sense of danger has been conducting safety training programs. Although researchers proposed the concept of safety culture to enforce on-site regulations and safety codes, the efficacy and validity of different safety programs are seldom examined and unsafe behavior has been constantly observed, as there is no objective and convincing approach to evaluate the performance of these safety programs.  This proposed research aims to develop a novel Perceived Risks Extended (PRE) safety program development framework to utilize quantitative perceived risks to assess safety programs and improve the efficiency of program modules. According to findings of previous research, the mismatch between the actual site risks and workers’ perceived risks is the main cause of unsafe behavior. Therefore, this research intends to (1) develop quantitative methods to assess the perceived risks using the Hybrid Kinematic- Electroencephalography (EEG) sensing method, (2) investigate and reveal the interrelationship between perceived risks and unsafe behavior, (3) propose a PRE safety assessment to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of safety programs. This proposed research will reveal the mechanism of on-site unsafe behavior and provide an effective tool to evaluate current safety programs. Using the proposed framework, construction and safety managers will able to develop effective and responsive safety programs or supplement existing programs to further improve project safety. In turn, this will secure the safety and health of construction workers, avoid losses due to injuries and fatalities, and reduce the costs of ineffective safety training or regulation.