Wearable technology for personalized construction safety monitoring and trending: Review of applicable devices

The construction process is considered a very risky endeavor because of the high frequency of work-related injuries and fatalities. The collection and analysis of safety data is an important element in measurement and improvement strategy development. The adoption of wearable technology has the potential for a result-oriented data collection and analysis approach to providing real-time information to construction personnel. The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of the applications of wearable technology for personalized construction safety monitoring. The characteristics of wearable devices and safety metrics thought to be capable of predicting safety performance and management practices are identified and analyzed. The review indicates that the existing wearable technologies applied in other industrial sectors can be used to monitor and measure a wide variety of safety performance metrics within the construction industry. Benefits of individual wearable sensors or systems can be integrated based on their attributes for multi-parameter monitoring of safety performance.