A framework for construction safety management and visualization system

With recent rapid advancement of visualization technologies, recognized research work for improving construction safety management practices has been conducted for identifying safety risks as well as worker onsite training. However, most of the previous studies were limited to reflect the site safety management process, which normally consists of planning-education-inspection phases. This study proposes a framework for a novel safety management and visualization system (SMVS) that integrates building information modeling (BIM), location tracking, augmented reality (AR), and game technologies. A prototype system has been developed and tested based on an illustrative accident scenario. The potentials and technical limitations of the prototype SMVS have been evaluated by site safety experts. A case study was also implemented, whose results show that the SMVS has a great potential to improve the identification of field safety risks, increase the risk recognition capacity of workers, and enhance the real-time communication between construction manager and workers. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.