Design and Development a Mobile Monitoring System for Improving the Occupational Health and Safety on Road Construction Sites

Abstract

The high rate of injuries and fatalities in construction sites is a significant concern for labor organizations. Construction is an often hazardous, predominantly land-based activity where site workers may be exposed to various risks. In these hazardous working environments, workers throughout the entire construction process face potential to many safety and health risks. Site risks could include working at height, moving machinery, power tools, hazardous substances and materials, and the effects of excessive dust, noise, and vibration. This article presents an architecture of an online occupational health and safety management system to manage some occupational hazards at a road construction site based upon wearable sensor measurements and a mobile phone. The proposed system by transferring measurement data through a Web interface enables authorized personnel to monitor the worker's condition. Recording data were presented by a graphical interface for the user and supervisor. By supporting real-time alarming and positioning services, unexpected events could be handled in a timely manner. This system would provide vital physiologic parameters, including heart rate, body temperature, and respiration rate, and ambient conditions such as air temperature and humidity, and UV indexes. Offline analysis on the gathered data from all of the workers could be conducted separately or in a group to determine where important trends are and why they happen. Experimental results of the implemented system showed good reliability and efficiency of the proposed system on monitoring the worker's status in a road construction site under the supervision of an occupational and safety management system. This successful implementation causes convenient supervising and easy reporting on the worker's condition as well as a reduced cost associated with work accidents and incidents.