Developing a Wearable Device Based on IoT to Monitor the Use of Personal Protective Equipment in Construction Projects

Using personal protective equipment (PPE) is one of the solutions for addressing projects’ hazards, but people do not use them properly because of different reasons, such as the lack of control. The multiplicity of people involved in a construction project is one of the reasons for the disability of monitoring all workers by conventional methods. This paper aims to solve the problem of simultaneous safety monitoring of projects by developing an online tracking PPE wearable device. The device has been designed based on the concept of the Internet of things. Different layers, such as sensors, network, information management, and a smartphone application, provide the necessary notifications to the safety authorities in the absence of using PPE by workers. The system was applied to various construction sites by a specific scenario. The results of this study are categorized into two sections. Firstly, regarding the device effectiveness, the observations showed that the frequency of nonuse of PPE was decreased. The secondary results are about the safety helmet that is the most statistics related to the nonuse of PPE. Also, there was no difference between the skilled and unskilled workers in the nonuse of PPE.