Automated hazardous area identification using laborers' actual and optimal routes

• The proposed system can identify hazardous areas in construction sites automatically.
• The system identifies hazardous areas using the deviation between laborers' location logs and optimal route.
• The system uses the real-time location system (RTLS) of laborers and a building information model (BIM).
• The system can decrease the exposure time of hazards and help prevent an accident from occurring.

Approximately 20% of accidents in construction industry occur while workers are moving through a construction site. Current construction hazard identification mostly relies on safety managers' capabilities to detect hazards. Consequently, numerous hazards remain unidentified, and unidentified hazards mean that hazards are not included in the safety management process. To enhance the capability of hazard identification, this paper proposes an automated hazardous area identification model based on the deviation between the optimal route (shortest path)—which is determined by extracting nodes from objects in a building information model (BIM)—and the actual route of a laborer collected from the real-time location system (RTLS). The hazardous area identification framework consists of six DBs and three modules. The unidentified hazardous area identification module identifies potentially hazardous areas (PHAs) in laborers' paths. The filtering hazardous area module reduces the range of possible hazardous areas to improve the efficiency of safety management. The monitoring and output generation module provides reports including hazardous area information. The suggested model can identify a hazard automatically and decrease the time laborers are exposed to a hazard. This can help improve both the effectiveness of the hazard identification process and enhance the safety for laborers.