A proactive system for real-time safety management in construction sites

Construction sites still present high accident rates. The advent of advanced sensing technologies has motivated the development of unprecedented automated systems, capable of supporting health and safety control. Their application is particularly critical in those cases where regular safety inspections may prove to be inadequate in terms of preventing risks which, because of their specific nature, are unpredictable.This paper reports the development of a first prototype for the proactive safety management and real-time signaling of potential overhead hazards. It is expected to enhance standard safety policies and assist inspectors and coordinators in executing their tasks. The system performs real-time tracking using ultra wide band technology and implements proactive virtual fencing logics. The development of the system, its laboratory test results, the algorithm optimization, and the final field test results are reported herein. The results achieved demonstrate the capability of proactive logics to reinforce safety management policies and assist personnel in coping with unpredictable hazardous events.