• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.69-80
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• 2022

The proportion of buildings over 30 years old in Korea has increased, from 29.0% in 2005 to 37.8% in 2019. These old buildings were built during a time in which there was a lack of building-related safety standards in areas such as fire safety performance. Worse, during their years of use, many such old buildings have had illegal changes and extensions made, making them more vulnerable in terms of safety. Fire safety investigations are being conducted to prevent large-scale disasters in multi-use buildings, but no investigation has been conducted at the regional district level, where small-scale old buildings are concentrated. Therefore, to identify fire risk factors in the old building district where old buildings are concentrated, the composition characteristics of the buildings were first analyzed. To examine the spatial characteristics of old building districts in order to derive fire risk factors, the results of this analysis based on the structure, use, roof type, and year of approval for use are as follows. It was found through our analysis that as of the date of approval for the use of the building, the main structure of the building has the greatest impact.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2020.12a
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• pp.137-145
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• 2020

Providing safety training to construction workers is essential to reduce safety accidents at the construction site. With the prosperity of visualization technologies, Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) has been adopted for construction safety training by providing interactive learning experiences in a virtual environment. Previous research efforts on IVR-based training have found that the level of fidelity of interaction between real and virtual worlds is one of the important factors contributing to the sense of presence that would affect training performance. Various interactive devices that link activities between real and virtual worlds have been applied in IVR-based training, ranging from existing computer input devices (e.g., keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc.) to specially designed devices such as high-end VR simulators. However, the need for high-fidelity interactive devices may hinder the applicability of IVR-based training as they would be more expensive than IVR headsets. In this regard, this study aims to understand the impact of the level of fidelity of interactive devices in the sense of presence in a virtual environment and the training performance during IVR-based forklift safety training. We conducted a comparative study by recruiting sixty participants, splitting them into two groups, and then providing different interactive devices such as a keyboard for a low fidelity group and a steering wheel and pedals for a high-fidelity group. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of the sense of presence and task performance. These results indicate that the use of low-fidelity interactive devices would be acceptable for IVR-based safety training as safety training focuses on delivering safety knowledge, and thus would be different from skill transferring training that may need more realistic interaction between real and virtual worlds.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.85-91
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• 2021

Type 1 and type 2 buildings must regularly conduct precise safety inspections and precise safety diagnosis for the safety and maintenance of facilities, and the safety grade of the building is determined according to the results of the implementation. In addition, the cycle of inspection and diagnosis is determined according to the safety grade of the building. In order to determine the safety grade of the building, a precise safety inspection conducts condition evaluation, and a precise safety diagnosis conducts condition evaluation and safety evaluation. Therefore, since the inspection and diagnosis cycle is determined according to the safety grade of the building, the condition evaluation and safety evaluation must be precise. However, in the case of member unit evaluation, which is the first step in evaluating the current condition, the evaluation grade is determined by using the representative value of the measurement result, and this may result in an error in the evaluation grade. To solve this problem, this study analyzed evaluation criteria for each evaluation item and presented evaluation criteria using inequalities to respond to measurement results and evaluation scores. In addition, we present a functional formula that can reflect performance scores for each evaluation item.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2020.11a
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• pp.63-64
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to find out how construction sites workers experience adaptation processes in relation to the prevention of safety accidents in the workplace through the method of grounded theory. In order to understand the experience of preventing safety accidents of workers at construction sites, a grounded theory analysis method was chosen. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, the first questionnaire was sent to 17 people working in the construction site by e-mail, and the participants of the study were met one by one for in-depth interviews. As a result of this study, the paradigm model of the experience of preventing safety accidents of workers at construction sites was classified into causal conditions, contextual conditions, central phenomena, intervening conditions, action/interactions, and outcomes. The conclusions of this study are as follows. First, forming a safety culture that can improve the safety awareness of construction sites is a priority. Second, it is necessary to improve self-management capabilities so that construction workers can accurately diagnose their current state such as their own body, emotion, and cognition and provide appropriate safety education. Third, providing safety education for construction workers with negative thoughts or distorted beliefs about safety accidents needs to include psychological treatment and counseling, such as methods of emotional purification, methods of relieving and managing stress, and methods of removing trauma.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2022.06a
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• pp.1146-1153
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• 2022

As the population is aging, accidents involving elderly people are also increasing (2014:11,667 persons; 2018: 11,797 persons). In the case of the elderly population, falling accidents are the primary direct or indirect causes of death; in particular, they face an elevated risk of staircase falls. This study proposes a method of evaluating the safety of staircases using Building Information Modeling (BIM)-based virtual simulation. By making a virtual user with the behavioral characteristics of the elderly respond to a staircase in a BIM model, its safety performance can be evaluated. The evaluation criteria were derived from regulations, elements, and characteristics relevant to the safety of staircases. To validate the proposed method, safety evaluation tests were simulated on actual staircases. The evaluation result of the test simulation shows the safety scores of 1.97 points for the elderly user and 2.95 points for the average male adult user against a required safety score of a minimum of 2 points. That is, safety is relative to users as the safety of the same staircase can be different depending upon the different behavioral characteristics of users. The study suggests that the risk of staircase-related fall accidents to the elderly can be reduced by improving staircase designs through the proposed method.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.94-101
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• 2015

When a severe disaster such as a building collapse occurs, a first priority for rapid rescue is to find a location where people are highly expected to be buried but alive. It is, however, very difficult to correctly designate the location of such cavities by conventional geophysical survey due to a pile of debris of building members. In this study, location of possible lifeguard cavities were evaluated through a series of simulations of building collapse by explosion depending on the height of the building, a structure of basement floor and a location of explosion. Three types of building structure: five-story, ten-story and fifteen-story were prepared as a model for the simulation. As a results, in the case of low building, only basement floor partially collapsed. On the other hand, in the case of high building, a collapsed range on the inside of the building increased and lifeguard spaces were formed only in the lateral side or corner of the building. In addition, when a wall exists in the basement floor, the possibility that cavities could be formed increased compared to the cases without wall. However, for the fifteen-story building case, no possible lifeguard cavity was found. It is noted that for a high rise building, the height of building more affect forming of safeguard cavity than the structure of the basement floor.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2013.01a
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• pp.60-65
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• 2013

Introducing the concept of construction safety in the design/engineering phase can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of safety management on construction sites. In this sense, further improvements for safety can be made in the design/engineering phase through the development of (1) an automated hazard identification process that is little dependent on user knowledge, (2) an automated construction schedule generation to accommodate varying hazard information over time, and (3) a visual representation of the results that is easy to understand. In this paper, we formulate an automated hazard identification framework for construction safety by extracting hazard information from related regulations to eliminate human interventions, and by utilizing a visualization technique in order to enhance users' understanding on hazard information. First, the hazard information is automatically extracted from textual safety and health regulations (i.e., Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) Standards) by using natural language processing (NLP) techniques without users' interpretations. Next, scheduling and sequencing of the construction activities are automatically generated with regard to the 3D building model. Then, the extracted hazard information is integrated into the geometry data of construction elements in the industry foundation class (IFC) building model using a conformity-checking algorithm within the open source 3D computer graphics software. Preliminary results demonstrate that this approach is advantageous in that it can be used in the design/engineering phases of construction without the manual interpretation of safety experts, facilitating the designers' and engineers' proactive consideration for improving safety management.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Building Construction
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.327-336
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• 2023

The focus of this research was to devise a conceptual methodology for drone usage and to assess the viability of safety checklist items specific to drone application in safety oversight. The appraisal was grounded in a focus group interview involving professionals from construction management and safety fields. The proposed process was segmented into four stages: 1) pre-flight phase for flight plan development, 2) drone flight phase for safety condition inspection utilizing checklist items, 3) post-flight phase for visual asset analysis, and 4) documentation and management phase. Furthermore, the research scrutinized the applicability of 32 distinct safety checklist items for drone operations. The primary aim of this investigation was to probe the possible deployment of drones as part of construction safety inspections at work sites. However, it bears mentioning that subsequent research should strive to gather a more extensive sample size through questionnaire surveys, thereby facilitating quantitative analysis. Administering such surveys would yield more comprehensive data compared to a focus group interview, which was constrained by a limited participant count. In summation, this study lays a foundational groundwork for understanding the potential advantages and challenges associated with integrating drones into construction safety management.

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.288-292
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to improve the refuge safety area in the high-rise building type. Each simulation was conducted to evaluate the performance of three types in improving the refuge safety area. Targeting the first 63 floors (no refuge safety area), secondly, to target up to the $30^{th}$ floor (refuge safety area on the $30^{th}$ floor, $47^{th}$ floor) specified in domestic laws, and finally, the $20^{th}$ floor (evacuation safety area on the $20^{th}$ floor, $42^{th}$ floor) were considered as targets. Through this analysis, the following results were obtained : The floor for the refuge safety area through simulations showed that the evacuation time is low. It is necessary to improve the floor for the refuge safety area by using the characteristics of the domestic fire fighting vehicle. The first floor for the refuge safety area from the ground floor differs according to the distance and height of the building floor. However, in the case of a business facility it is 15F, and in the case of apartment housing, it is 20F.

• Journal of the Korea Construction Safety Engineering Association
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• s.46
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• pp.74-81
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• 2008