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Purpose Over the past decade, researchers have used unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in construction industry for various applications from site inspection to safety monitoring or building maintenance. This paper aims to assort academic studies on construction UAS applications, summarize logics behind using UAS in each application and extend understanding of current state of UAS research in the construction setting. Design/methodology/approach This research follows a systematic literature assessment methodology to summarize the results of 54 research papers over the past ten years and outlines the research trends for applying UASs in construction. Findings UASs are used in building inspection, damage assessment, site surveying, safety inspection, progress monitoring, building maintenance and other construction applications. Cost saving, time efficiency and improved accessibility are the primary reasons for choosing UAS in construction applications. Rotary-wing UASs are the most common types of UASs being used in construction. Cameras, LiDAR and Kinect are the most common onboard sensors integrated in construction UAS applications. The control styles used are manual, semi-autonomous and autonomous. Originality/value This paper contributes to classification of UAS applications in construction research and identification of UAS hardware and sensor types as well as their flying control systems in construction literature.

Improving the hazard-identification skills of construction workers is a vital step towards preventing accidents in the increasingly complex working conditions of construction jobsites. Training the construction workforce to recognize hazards therefore plays a central role in preparing workers to actively understand safety-related risks and make assertive safety decisions. Considering the inadequacies of traditional safety-training methods (e.g., passive lectures, videos, demonstrations), researchers have employed advanced visualization techniques such as virtual reality technologies to enable users to actively improve their hazard-identification skills in a safe and controlled environment. However, current virtual reality techniques sacrifice realism and demand high computational costs to reproduce real environments. Augmented 360-degree panoramas of reality offers an innovative alternative that creates low-cost, simple-to-capture, true-to-reality representations of the actual construction jobsite within which trainees may practice identifying hazards. This proof-of-concept study developed and evaluated a platform using augmented 360-degree panoramas of reality (PARS) for safety-training applications to enhance trainees’ hazard-identification skills for four types of sample hazards. Thirty subjects participated in a usability test that evaluated the PARS training platform and its augmented 360-degree images captured from real construction jobsites. The usability reviews demonstrate that the trainees found the platform and augmentations advantageously to learning hazard identification. The results of this study will foreseeably help researchers in developing engaging training platforms to improve the hazard-identification skills of workers.

Purpose The architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry exists in a dynamic environment and requires several stakeholders to communicate regularly. However, evidence indicates current communication practices fail to meet the requirements of increasingly complex projects. With the advent of Industry 4.0, a trend is noted to create a digital communication environment between stakeholders. Identified as a central technology in Industry 4.0, virtual reality (VR) has the potential to supplement current communication and facilitate the digitization of the AEC industry. This paper aims to explore how VR has been applied and future research directions for communication purpose. Design/methodology/approach This research follows a systematic literature assessment methodology to summarize the results of 41 research articles in the last 15 years and outlines the applications of VR in facilitating communication in the AEC domain. Findings Relevant VR applications are mainly found in building inspection, facility management, safety training, construction education and design and review. Communication tools and affordance are provided or built in several forms: text-based tools, voice chat tool, visual sharing affordance and avatars. Objective and subjective communication assessments are observed from those publications. Originality/value This review contributes to identifying the recent employment areas and future research directions of VR to facilitate communication in the AEC domain. The outcome can be a practical resource to guide both industry professionals and researchers to recognize the potentials of VR and will ultimately facilitate the creation of digital construction environments.

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