Wearable Physiological Status Monitors for Measuring and Evaluating Workers' Physical Strain: Preliminary Validation

Abstract

Construction activities are usually physically demanding and performed in ubiquitous, highly variable, and, often harsh environments. Excessive physical strain affects productivity, inattentiveness, and accidents. Therefore, a monitoring system able to assess workers’ physical strain may be an important step towards better safety and productivity management. Previous efforts to assess construction workers’ physical demand relied on instrumentation that hindered workers’ activities. However, worker’s physical strain can now be monitored by recently-introduced, non-intrusive Physiological Status Monitors (PSMs). We have investigated three PSMs to assess if they can effectively monitor a person during activities similar to construction workforce’s dynamic activities. Comparing PSMs’ and standard laboratory instruments’ measurements, we found that two of the selected PSMs are mostly reliable and accurate. These preliminary results demonstrate the PSMs’ effectiveness in monitoring subjects during dynamic activities and show promise that they can be successfully implemented to monitor construction workers’ physical strain.