Assessing Workers Perceived Risk During Construction Task Using A Wristband-Type Biosensor

TL;DR

This study develops a noninvasive, continuous monitoring framework using wristband biosensors and machine learning to assess construction workers' perceived risk, overcoming limitations of traditional survey methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel physiological signal-based approach for real-time risk perception assessment in construction, enhancing objectivity and continuous monitoring capabilities.

Findings

EDA signals are feasible for risk perception prediction.

Supervised machine learning accurately classifies risk levels.

Physiological monitoring improves safety assessment in construction.

Abstract

The construction industry has demonstrated a high frequency and severity of accidents. Construction accidents are the result of the interaction between unsafe work conditions and workers unsafe behaviors. Given this relation, perceived risk is determined by an individual response to a potential work hazard during the work. As such, risk perception is critical to understand workers unsafe behaviors. Established methods of assessing workers perceived risk have mainly relied on surveys and interviews. However, these post-hoc methods, which are limited to monitoring dynamic changes in risk perception and conducting surveys at a construction site, may prove cumbersome to workers. Additionally, these methods frequently suffer from self-reported bias. To overcome the limitations of previous subjective measures, this study aims to develop a framework for the objective and continuous prediction of construction workers perceived risk using physiological signals [e.g., electrodermal activity (EDA)] acquired from workers wristband-type biosensors. To achieve this objective, physiological signals were collected from eight construction workers while they performed regular tasks in the field. Various filtering methods were applied to exclude noises recorded in the signal and to extract various features of the signals as workers experienced different risk levels. Then, a supervised machine-learning model was trained to explore the applicability of the collected physiological signals for the prediction of risk perception. The results showed that features based on EDA data collected from wristbands are feasible and useful to the process of continuously monitoring workers perceived risk during ongoing work. This study contributes to an in-depth understanding of construction workers perceived risk by developing a noninvasive means of continuously monitoring workers perceived risk.