Safety barrier warning system for underground construction sites using Internet-of-Things technologies

This paper proposes an Internet-of-Things-based (IoT-based) safety barrier warning system to achieve a safer underground construction site. A focus of this paper is to establish a hazard energy monitoring system and use IoT to generate early warnings and alarms as dynamical safety barriers for hazard energy on underground construction sites. To ensure the performance of the proposed system, the hazard energies and their coupling mechanisms was analyzed to provide safety barrier strategies and scenarios for avoiding unsafe behaviors and unsafe status of construction equipment and workers' environment. The IoT technologies, such as meter-level of RFID-based location and tracking technology, centimeter-level of ultrasonic detection technology, and infrared access technology and so on, were developed in three-tier network architecture to help workers change their risky behaviors and avoid accidents on the changing construction site. The implementation in Yangtze River-crossing Metro Tunnel Construction site has shown the safety performance was improved and the occurrence of accident caused by hazard energy on site could be prevented.