Virtual Reality for Enhancing Safety in Construction

Virtual reality (VR) is the most advanced form of visualization and simulation. Although its benefits on critical thinking and cognitive abilities are proven, VR is not strongly utilized in construction. The research is driven by the fact that "learning by doing" is more effective than traditional methods. Therefore, the goal of this research is to develop and test a prototype for the subsequent large-scale utilization of VR in enhancing safety in construction sites and in education. The objectives are to (1) verify the applicability of VR in construction education, (2) evaluate the prototype developed in terms of efficiency in enhancing safety performance, (3) evaluate the model in terms of sickness and usability, and (4) provide recommendations to be implemented in the model to be used in the large-scale testing of the VR technology within education in the construction field. After the development and testing of the prototype, results indicate that the immersive VR model significantly enhanced hazard identification skills compared to traditional safety training. In addition, the assessment of its efficiency and feasibility have shown the potential of VR in improving construction education; thus, paving the way for having VR as the main complementary tool to traditional education on a larger scale in the future.