• Safety and Health at Work
• /
• v.11 no.4
• /
• pp.537-542
• /
• 2020

Background: Personal protective equipment (PPE) has been designed in such a way to reduce accident rates. Unfortunately, existing PPE is rather ineffective as it is not able to provide warning signals when hazard is around. The integration of intelligent systems is envisaged to increase the efficiency of existing PPE. Methods: This project designed a safety vest incorporated with metal detectors which can provide immediate warning to the field workers when there is metal hazard around. This product has greater freedom of design via smart manufacturing as it involves the assembly of few commercially available parts into a single entity. Briefly, the metal detector is a do it yourself (DIY) kit, and the safety vest is purchasable from any local market. The DIY kit was connected to a copper coil and being sewed into the safety vest. Results: The metal detector induces beeping sound when there is metal hazard around. A total of 121 engineering students were introduced to the prototype before being requested to answer a survey associated with the design. Respondents have rated >3.00/5.00 for the design simplicity, ease of usage, and light weight. Meanwhile, respondents suggested that the design should be further improved by increasing the metal detection range. Conclusion: It is envisaged that the introduction of this smart safety vest will allow the workers to carry out their duties securely by reducing the accident rates. Particularly, such design is expected to reduce workplace accident especially during night time at construction sites where the visibility is low.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
• /
• 2022.06a
• /
• pp.136-144
• /
• 2022

Construction sites are characterized by dangerous situations and environments that cause fatal accidents. Potential risk detection needs to be improved by continuously monitoring site conditions. However, the current labor-intensive inspection practice has many limitations in monitoring dangerous conditions at construction sites. Computer vision technology that can quickly analyze and collect site conditions from images has been in the spotlight as a solution. Nonetheless, inspection results obtained via computer vision are still stored and managed in centralized systems vulnerable to tampering with information by the central node. Blockchain has been used as a reliable and efficient decentralized information management system. Despite its potential, only limited research has been conducted integrating computer vision and blockchain. Therefore, to solve the current safety management problems, the authors propose a framework for construction site inspection that integrates object detection and blockchain network, enabling efficient and reliable remote inspection. Object detection is applied to enable the automatic analysis of site safety conditions. As a result, the workload of safety managers can be reduced with inspection results stored and distributed reliably through the blockchain network. In addition, errors or forgery in the inspection process can be automatically prevented and verified through a smart contract. As site safety conditions are reliably shared with project participants, project participants can remotely inspect site conditions and make safety-related decisions in trust.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.4 no.5
• /
• pp.517-530
• /
• 2008

This paper deals with civil infrastructures in general, sensor and smart structure technology, and smart steel structures in particular. Smart structures technology, an integrated engineering field comprising sensor technology, structural control, smart materials and structural health monitoring, could dramatically transform and revolutionize the design, construction and maintenance of civil engineering structures. The central core of this technology is sensor and sensor networks that provide the essential data input in real time for condition assessment and decision making. Sensors and robust monitoring algorithms that can reliably detect the occurrence, location, and severity of damages such as crack and corrosion in steel structures will lead to increased levels of safety for civil infrastructure, and may significantly cut maintenance or repair cost through early detection. The emphasis of this paper is on sensor technology with a potential use in steel structures.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.287-299
• /
• 2022

Rather than using smartphones as seismometers with designated locations and orientations, this study proposes to employ crowds' smartphones in buildings to perform fast safety assessment of buildings. The principal advantage of using crowds' smartphones is the potential to monitor the safety of millions of buildings without hardware costs, installation labor, and long-term maintenance. This study's goal is to measure the maximum interstory drift ratios during earthquake excitation using crowds' smartphones. Beacons inside the building are required to provide the location and relevant building information for the smartphones via Bluetooth. Wi-Fi Direct is employed between nearby smartphones to conduct peer-to-peer time synchronization and exchange the acceleration data measured. An algorithm to align the orientation between nearby smartphones is proposed, and the performance of the orientation alignment, interstory drift measurement, and damage level estimation are studied numerically. Finally, the proposed approach's performance is verified using large-scale shaking table tests of a scaled steel building. The results presented in this study illustrate the potential to use crowds' smartphones with the proposed approach to record building motions during earthquakes and use those data to estimate buildings' safety based on the interstory drift ratios measured.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
• /
• v.64 no.4
• /
• pp.21-30
• /
• 2022

Renewable energy systems aim to achieve carbon neutrality and replace fossil fuels. Photovoltaic technologies are the most widely used renewable energy. However, they require a large operating area, thereby decreasing available farmland. Accordingly, agrivoltaic systems (AVSs)-innovative smart farm technologies that utilize solar energy for crop growth and electricity production-are attracting attention. Although several empirical studies on these systems have been conducted, comprehensive research on their design is lacking, and no standard model suitable for South Korea has been developed. Therefore, this study created an integral design of AVS reflecting domestic crop cultivation conditions and conducted a structural analysis for safety assessment. The shading ratio, planting distance, and agricultural machinery work of the system were determined. In addition, national construction standards were applied to evaluate their structural safety using a finite element analysis. Through this, the safety of this system was ensured, and structural considerations were put forward. It is expected that the AVS model will allow for a stable utilization of renewable energy and smart farm technologies in rural areas.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
• /
• v.22 no.2
• /
• pp.88-96
• /
• 2021

There have been many efforts to identify and eliminate the direct causes of the construction accident, but many accidents are still occurring in the construction industry. The main reason for the construction accident is not because of ignorance of the causes, but because of safety insensitivity. This paper analyzes why construction workers feel safety insensitivity and how safety insensitivity varies depending on their age and work experience. A survey of 103 construction workers confirmed that systematic safety education is the most important factor in minimizing safety insensitivity of construction workers. On the other hand, economic reasons such as cost reduction were identified as the most tempting factor to increase safety insensitivity. In addition, the survey results showed that those in their 40s and 50s, the largest proportion of construction workers, have a significantly higher level of safety insensitivity than those in their 20s and 60s. These findings are expected to be valuable source that can be used to prevent construction safety accidents.

• Journal of the Korea Safety Management & Science
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.17-23
• /
• 2019

The applications of information and communication technology (ICT) into real industrial fields are getting great attentions in recent years. More and more industrial practitioners and scientific researchers are conducting studies and trying to adopt the technologies into diverse industrial fields. The purpose of this study is to review the technologies such as big data and smart sensors and to provide application cases in order to facilitate grafting the 4th industrial revolutionary technologies onto the safety and health systems. Based on the comprehensive reviews on literature, reports, and industrial cases, we found that big data technology has been used in industries for investigating work related disease. In addition, digital image technology and drone have been applied to establish safety system in construction industry. Lastly, some companies have tried to apply the technologies to build their own safety and health system.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
• /
• v.20 no.4
• /
• pp.93-99
• /
• 2020

It seems to be increased rapidly that practical uses of intelligent Dron for public mission performance such as surveillance, prevention of disaster accident, relief etc with Dron technology development. Dron is needed for major technology realization of detection and trace technology of target, flight control and obstacle avoidance during flighting, detection and control of landing point functions to use smart safety-city platform construction. This dron system cause a great ripple effect technically and promote industrialization in the field of new technology. In this paper, an effective analysis and design method of dron system software will be presented by showing user requirement analysis using object-oriented method, flowchart and screen design.

• International journal of advanced smart convergence
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.159-166
• /
• 2023

Due to the aging workforce in the construction industry in South Korea, the accident rate has been increasing. The cognitive abilities of older workers are closely related to both safety incidents and labor productivity. Therefore, there is a need to improve cognitive abilities through personalized training based on cognitive assessment results, using cognitive training content, in order to enable safe performance in labor-intensive environments. The provided cognitive training content includes concentration, memory, oreintation, attention, and executive functions. Difficulty levels were applied to each content to enhance user engagement and interest. To stimulate interest and encourage active participation of the participants, the difficulty level was automatically adjusted based on feedback from the MMSE-DS results and content measurement data. Based on the accumulated data, individual training scenarios have been set differently to intensively improve insufficient cognitive skills, and cognitive training programs will be developed to reduce safety accidents at construction sites through measured data and research. Through such simple cognitive training, it is expected that the reduction of accidents in the aging construction workforce can lead to a decrease in the social costs associated with prolonged construction periods caused by accidents.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
• /
• v.21 no.1
• /
• pp.126-131
• /
• 2017

This paper designs a smart safety measurement system with Bluetooth beacon sensor nodes that can provide risk detection and evacuation/countermeasure services. The Bluetooth beacon sensor nodes is easily able to be attached to old building wall or construction or civil structure with potential danger. The proposed smart safety measurement system transmits various sensor data such as acceleration, gyroscope, geomagnetic, pressure, altitude, temperature, humidity at the spot where Bluetooth beacon sensor nodes are installed, and we can use them for risk perception, prediction, and warning services. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed system, we performed filed tests which showed that measured displacement values of precast retaining walls were within the permitted displacement value of 38.5 mm.