• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.32-43
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• 2012

"low and old age trend" is a big social national problem in korea but also in foreign countries. The Government pursues a policy for aged people to take part in construction site as labours. Low childbirth and avoidance of 3D work kinds lead to exposure of aged workers to industry work places. According to korea department of labour, it is expected that 18% of total economic activity people in 2008 to 27.2% in 2018 be increased with age of more than 55 old years. Therefore, It is needed that more countermeasures for old workers should be taken for safer work conditions. This old workers with more than 55 old years contain major portion of accident occurrence in construction industry. It is found that accident rate in construction industry can be decreased if appropriate technical safety training is provided to them who wish to work at construction sites. Statistic analysis such as frequency, cross, logistic regression using program package SPSS 13.0 has been made after collecting questionnaire survey of more than 330 workers at construction sites.

• The Journal of Korea Robotics Society
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.199-206
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• 2021

The robot is an effective means to perform repetitive tasks quickly and accurately. It could be more effective in dangerous environments where human is difficult to access. The construction site is a dangerous environment with a high possibility of industrial accidents where heavy work is frequently carried out at a high place. In particular, an accident in the construction site is highly likely to lead to a severe disaster. Of course, various technologies are being developed to monitor the safety of workers in construction sites and prevent accidents, but there is a limit to eliminate the risk of accidents. Therefore, it is necessary to make efforts to replace workers exposed to dangerous environments with equipment or robots that could be controlled remotely in a more active way. In this study, Remote Precise Installation System was proposed to replace the workers exposed to the risk of accident at a high place during the bridge construction. Also, the conceptual design and analytical reviews of this system were carried out. Suppose Remote Precise Installation System is developed according to the derived concept and the target performance. In that case, this system is expected to be applied as a technology that can effectively replace the workers at the bridge construction site.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.1242-1242
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• 2022

Annually, several construction workers fall ill, are injured, or die due to heat-related exposure. The prevalence of work-related heat illness may rise and become an issue for workers operating in temperate climates, given the increase in frequency and intensity of heatwaves in the US. An increase in temperature negatively impacts physical exertion levels and mental state, thereby increasing the potential of accidents on the job site. To reduce the impact of heat stress on workers, it is critical to develop and implement measures for monitoring physical exertion levels and mental state in hot conditions. For this, limited studies have evaluated the utility of wearable biosensors in measuring physical exertion and mental workload in hot conditions. In addition, most studies focus solely on male participants, with little to no reference to female workers who may be exposed to greater heat stress risk. Therefore, this study aims to develop a process for objective and continuous assessment of worker physical exertion and mental workload using wearable biosensors. Physiological data were collected from eight (four male and four female) participants performing a simulated drilling task at 92oF and about 50% humidity level. After removing signal artifacts from the data using multiple filtering processes, the data was compared to a perceived muscle exertion scale and mental workload scale. Results indicate that biosensors' features can effectively detect the change in worker physical and mental state in hot conditions. Therefore, wearable biosensors provide a feasible and effective opportunity to continuously assess worker physical exertion and mental workload.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.877-885
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• 2022

Vision-based activity recognition has been widely attempted at construction sites to estimate productivity and enhance workers' health and safety. Previous studies have focused on extracting an individual worker's postural information from sequential image frames for activity recognition. However, various trades of workers perform different tasks with similar postural patterns, which degrades the performance of activity recognition based on postural information. To this end, this research exploited a concept of human-object interaction, the interaction between a worker and their surrounding objects, considering the fact that trade workers interact with a specific object (e.g., working tools or construction materials) relevant to their trades. This research developed an approach to understand the context from sequential image frames based on four features: posture, object, spatial features, and temporal feature. Both posture and object features were used to analyze the interaction between the worker and the target object, and the other two features were used to detect movements from the entire region of image frames in both temporal and spatial domains. The developed approach used convolutional neural networks (CNN) for feature extractors and activity classifiers and long short-term memory (LSTM) was also used as an activity classifier. The developed approach provided an average accuracy of 85.96% for classifying 12 target construction tasks performed by two trades of workers, which was higher than two benchmark models. This experimental result indicated that integrating a concept of the human-object interaction offers great benefits in activity recognition when various trade workers coexist in a scene.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Rural Architecture
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.95-102
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• 2014

The number of industrial accident victims in the construction industry accounts for 1/3 of those in the entire industries and about 30% of the total compensation costs are spent in the construction industry. As such, the construction industry is a typical industry causing numerous safety accidents. This study analyzes the status of industrial accidents in small scale construction sites to build maximum five-story buildings by examining statistical data for the past five years, investigating those construction sites and conducting interviews with the workers. This study also seeks the causes of and measures for industrial accidents in the small scale construction industry through comparison with relevant systems. The findings are as follows: (1) To reduce hazard rate, shaping the working environment and safety measures that take into account the physically weak classes of the middle aged and the aging are urgently required, because 62.9% of the industrial accidents in the construction industry occurred to those who are 50 years of age or older. (2) The hazard rate at small scale construction sites with less than 10 construction workers accounts for 55% of that of the entire industries. The government, in this context, needs to support finance or technology and improve system by selecting the small scale construction sites, where industrial accidents occur frequently. (3) Because the hazard rate of unskilled workers with less than 6 months of work experience accounts for 90.95% of the total, safety education needs to be concentrated on those unskilled workers. (4) The relevant standards need to be segmented and revised and bolstered, given that 64.79% of death disaster in the construction industry occurs in the temporary structures including scaffolds and ladders.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.27-32
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• 2019

This study examined the mediated effects of job satisfaction and the control effects of the perceived organizational support awareness on the effects of safety awareness recognized by construction workers on unsafe acts as a way to reduce unsafe acts. To this end, 439 workers at 23 construction sites across the country received a questionnaire from July 1 to July 20, 2019 and the data were analyzed, which resulted in the following conclusions. First, the sense of safety in which construction workers are late has a direct influence on job satisfaction. Second, job satisfaction recognized by construction workers has been shown to have a direct negative effect on the anxiety act. Third, job satisfaction was influenced by the medium in relation to safety awareness and anxiety transfer act recognized by construction workers. Fourth, the adjustment effect of the perceived organizational support awareness in the relationship between safety awareness and task satisfaction was shown to be significant. This study suggests that to prevent unsafe acts at construction sites, increased safe acts reduce the level of anxiety transfer due to a high sense of safety and job satisfaction by workers.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.208-212
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• 2016

Background: Outdoor workers are at risk of high ultraviolet radiation exposure, and may have difficulty using sun protection. The objectives were to determine the prevalence of sun protection behaviors in a sample of outdoor construction workers, and to assess which factors predict better sun protection practices. Methods: Participants were recruited via construction unions. Workers answered a questionnaire on demographics, skin cancer risk, sun protection behaviors, and job. Sun protection behavior scores (from questions on sunscreen use, sleeved shirt, hat, shade seeking, sunglasses) were calculated by converting Likert-scale answers to scores from 0 to 4, and taking the mean (separately for work and leisure). Determinants of sun protection behavior scores were examined for work and leisure using generalized linear models. Results: Seventy-seven workers had complete questionnaire data (participation 98%). Sun protection behaviors used most often were hats (79% often/always) and sleeved shirts (82% often/always); least prevalent were shade-seeking (8% often/always) and sunscreen (29% often/always). For both work and leisure scores, the strongest predictor was skin type, with fairer-skinned individuals having higher sun protection behavior scores. Workers had higher scores at work than on weekends. Workplaces that required hats and sleeved shirts for safety purposes had higher protection behavior scores. Conclusion: This high-participation rate cohort helps characterize sun protection behaviors among outdoor workers. Workers practiced better sun protection at work than on weekends, suggesting that workplace policies supportive of sun protection could be useful for skin cancer prevention in the construction industry.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.67-73
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• 2016

According to industrial accident analysis of the Ministry of Employment and Labor in 2013, 38 workers were injured by fall accidents on average per day, and one worker died on average per day among them. In various industries such as heavy and construction industry, the full body harness is commonly used to prevent the fall accident. In developing full body harness, the designer considered only the workers' safety, without taking into account comfort and workability. The survey was conducted so as to search the problems of full body harness currently used by workers in heavy and construction industry. The survey questionnaire was given to 565 workers wearing full body harness in heavy and construction industry. The results of study showed that the development of new full body harness considering body size of korean was needed. The impotent factors for developing of new full body harness were the size and the weight of the full body harness. The full body harness taking into account body size was judged to contribute to more comfortable work, work efficiency and safety. The result of this study can be utilized as useful data in the development of new full body harness considering the body size of korean workers.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.396-403
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• 2016

Objectives: The study is to evaluate biological monitoring and risk assessment for epichlorohydrin-bisphenol A resin exposed from waterproofing or finishing work in the apartment building construction. Methods: Subjected workers were working on spray-painting and waterproofing work for 8 hours per day every 20 days. The urine samples were collected at the end of 20 days working period. For urinary bisphenol A as metabolite from epichlorohydrin-bisphenol A exposure, urine samples were analyzed with liquid chromatography mass-mass spectrometry(HPLC-MS/MS). Results: Geometric means of urinary bisphenol A(BPA) with no hydrolysis and with enzymic hydrolysis(BPA-EH) in the workers were $1.10{\mu}g/L$ and $2.90{\mu}g/L$. BPA-EH was 4 times higher than that of control group. The factors for working period and ages did not affect the variation of BPA and BPA-EH. The levels for BPA and BPA-EH were not higher than 95th percentile for exposure on human-life environment. Conclusions: The BPA and BPA-EH were therefore effective biological markers for epichlorohydrin-bisphenol A exposure workers, but not seem to hazardous exposure level. Waterproofing work in construction workshop is required to measuring work environment and health care management for the workers.

• Fashion & Textile Research Journal
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.174-179
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to research the actual condition of working environment, working clothes and personal protective equipments on workers at a construction site in winter. The one to one interview by questionnaire was performed with 33 males and 2 females workers of a construction site in Daegu at $1.3^{\circ}C$ air temperature, 28% R.H., 4.7m/sec air velocity. The questionnaire consisted of 21 questions including 4 personal characteristics questions, 12 working environment/performance questions and 5 working clothes/personal protective equipments questions. It was modified from the original questionnaire developed by Finnish Institute Occupational Health. We found that physical stress of workers increased and the ability of performance decreased. The workers felt the coldest at hands/fingers, feet/toes and the face part of cheek, nose and ears. They rarely wore thermal clothing for winter and answered that the thermal gloves for winter did not provided enough warmth. Even if the workers recognized the necessity of personal protective equipments for their safety, they did not wear them for efficiency of working performance. These results will be useful elementary materials for development of working clothes and personal protective equipments from the viewpoint of improving both working performance and comfort.