Hard-Hat Detection for Construction Safety Visualization

Abstract

In 2012, 775 fatalities were recorded, and many more were injured at construction sites in the United States. Of these, 415 fatalities (54%) were due to fall, slips, and trips as well as being struck by falling objects. In order to decrease fatalities at construction sites to these types of events, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) provides Fall Prevention and OSHA-10 trainings to construction workers. Moreover, safety personnel monitor whether the workers use personal protective equipment (PPE) properly. Data shows that construction fatalities have decreased by 2% annually since 1994; however, the owners still are not satisfied with this result. Various studies have shown that fall is the biggest contributor for construction fatalities. One study showed that half of the fall fatalities were because the workers either had not used PPEs or had not used them properly. In addition, studies showed that, with proper use of hard hats, the fatalities due to fall, slips, trips, and being struck by falling objects could be reduced. This study developed and tested a hard-hat detection tool that uses image-processing techniques to identify whether workers are wearing hard hats. The tool dispatches warning messages if the workers do not use hard hats.

PPEs Compliance Technology to Legalize the Automated Monitoring of Safety Standards

“…Teizer and Reynolds [12] studied the usefulness of smart hard hats to help workers avoid contact with hazard equipment using radio frequency and wireless microprocessors to warn workers once they are close to specified equipment's. Shrestha et al [13] created a framework to visualize construction safety and detection algorithm. She used CCTV cameras and server side connection to detect workers without their PPEs.…”

“…This paper examines the effects of legalizing smart hard hats to remotely monitor any PPE violations in construction sites and using systematic tools to provide 24/7 surveillance for to detect any workers who are not using their assigned PPE or not using them properly. Studies showed that using smart hard hats for visualizing PPE usage had significant factor for reducing violations and this will lead to reduce number of fatal injuries among site workers [10].…”

A real-time control approach based on intelligent video surveillance for violations by construction workers

“…To address site safety issues, Shrestha et al (2015) established a safety system to monitor whether workers properly use PPE, and Zhu et al (2016) proposed novel Kalman filters to predict movements of workers and mobile equipment on construction sites. Han and Lee (2013) proposed a framework of vision-based unsafe action detection for behavior monitoring which can identify critical unsafe behavior.…”

Analysis of Visual Management Practices for Construction Safety

“…Many causes can lead to safety accidents. Proper VM plays a great role in ensuring a safe workplace whereas the lack of VM and poor visualization leads to unsafe situations which cause accidents (Shrestha et al, 2011).…”