Development of an Intelligent Control System to Integrate Computer Vision Technology and Big Data of Safety Accidents in Korea

Construction safety remains an ongoing concern, and project managers have been increasingly forced to cope with myriad uncertainties related to human operations on construction sites and the lack of a skilled workforce in hazardous circumstances. Various construction fatality monitoring systems have been widely proposed as alternatives to overcome these difficulties and to improve safety management performance. In this study, we propose an intelligent, automatic control system that can proactively protect workers using both the analysis of big data of past safety accidents, as well as the real-time detection of worker non-compliance in using personal protective equipment (PPE) on a construction site. These data are obtained using computer vision technology and data analytics, which are integrated and reinforced by lessons learned from the analysis of big data of safety accidents that occurred in the last 10 years. The system offers data-informed recommendations for high-risk workers, and proactively eliminates the possibility of safety accidents. As an illustrative case, we selected a pilot project and applied the proposed system to workers in uncontrolled environments. Decreases in workers PPE non-compliance rates, improvements in variable compliance rates, reductions in severe fatalities through guidelines that are customized according to the worker, and accelerations in safety performance achievements are expected.