A critical review of virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) applications in construction safety
Introduction
Construction is a large, dynamic and complex sector that offers a large number of employment opportunities for millions of people worldwide [1]. However, fatal accidents in the construction industry tend to be higher than other sectors [2], for a long run, such a phenomenon has aroused a lot of safety concerns and discussions. Safety management, a method of manipulating on-site safety policies, procedures, and practices relating to a construction project, is one of the most frequently leveraged techniques to regulate construction activities and control risks [3]. Previous studies revealed that most accidents associated with construction undertakings were attributed to a lack of proactive and preventive measures such as workforce training, risk source identification and control, safety awareness and education, and so forth [4]. On the other hand, how effective these measures could work is subject to how much job-site knowledge could be solicited and how efficiently the knowledge could be absorbed [5], [6]. To this end, information visualization techniques such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), Virtual Reality (VR) Augmented Reality (AR), as well as other game engine-based Mixed Reality (MR) techniques, have been delved into to advance the current safety management practices [7], [8], [9], [10].
A long-established climate that safety is tied up with management has placed many construction firms and researchers' primary focus on cultural intervention, uptake of safety behaviors, organizational ideologies, espoused and enacted policies, communication and induction, and etc. [11], [12]. Meanwhile, a quick look through into VR/AR-CS publications helps identify that VR/AR technologies have been probed and tentatively implemented in various safety enhancement areas, such as risks identification, workforce training, skill transfer, ergonomics, and so on. Most studies have rationalized the development of a vast variety of VR/AR-CS systems for a safety enhancement purpose, and some studies have made efforts to summarize the VR/AR-CS. For example, Bhoir and Esmaeili [13] conduct an in-depth literature review to investigate the prevailing adoption rate of virtual reality environment to train workers regarding safety issues. And Guo et al. [14] examine the application of visualization technologies in construction safety and find that visualization technology can efficiently improve the safety training, facilitate job hazard area identification and accident prevention in a visual, interactive and cooperative way. However, they loosely compare how effectively these tailored technologies and systems, particularly for augmented reality and virtual reality, could be utilized to facilitate construction safety considering the disparity of evaluation method, technology characteristics, project types, scales, work complexity and other factors. Meanwhile, because the VR/AR-CS literature is found overwhelmingly diverse and vast, academia and industry may not be acutely aware of the authentic limitations and gaps in this area. Integration and classification of the reported literature within the VR/AR-CS domain may help them to gain a better understanding of the state-of-the-art and the related challenges. To cater to the industrial demands, additionally, it is also essential to have the most appropriate VR/AR devices, applications, systems, safety enhancement mechanisms and evaluation methodologies suggested. Therefore, the aims of this review are to address the aforementioned limitations and gaps through coming up with the most significant body of knowledge of VR/AR-CS and to drive the prospective research directions up to the most valuable and critical areas that the industrial and academic communities are adhering to.
Section snippets
An overview of VR/AR technologies and peripherals
Virtual reality (VR) simulation is to generate immersive environments from which users can experience unique insights into the way the real world works [15], [16]. The concept of VR was brought up over fifty years ago when the first immersive human-computer interaction (HCI) mock-up named “Man-Machine Graphical Communication System” was invented [17]. The formal term of VR was put up in 1989 [18]. Since then, several taxonomies have been raised by scholars to expound where a rigorous VR concept
Review methodology
This research leverages the content analysis-based review method [28]. This method has been a well-recognized method for reviewing and synthesizing literature and rationalizing outcomes, and been widely applied in the research field of engineering/construction management [29], [30]. Scopus and ISI Web of Science, the abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, were used to select a number of first-tier articles that are related to VR/AR-CS, from the authoritative and
Justification of publication quantity and contribution
Since the emergence of the first VR/AR-CS publication in 2000, the number of yearly publications remained at around 1.5 and was not observed a noticeable increase until 2008. From 2008, a significant increase of publications was witnessed, featuring an average amount of 8 papers per year till 2017 (Fig. 5). Among these journals, three construction-technology-themed journals (namely, AIC, JCCE and ITCon) are observed the highest amounts of publications, i.e., 30 for AIC, 12 for JCCE, 8 for
Implementation of critical review
As the review deals with numerous papers, it is important for the methodology to be predicated upon a rational taxonomy that can help direct the review focus and elicit the valuable findings into the area of research. This paper presents a review taxonomy consolidated by four specifications, namely, VR/AR technology characteristics incorporating input and output; VR/AR application domains in safety management; safety enhancement mechanisms; and safety assessment and evaluation (Fig.7).
Conclusion
VR/AR-CS has received a considerable amount of attention within the research and construction industry in the past two decades. This study has provided a critical review of the development of VR/AR-CS in the academic field, and hence, has established a solid platform for scholars and professionals to obtain useful insights into VR/AR-CS concerns. Research into VR/AR-CS has been conducted from different perspectives including (1) technology characteristics; (2) application domains; (3) safety
Acknowledgement
The authors are grateful to Dr. Lei Hou for his guidance, comments,and suggestions on this research. This research was undertaken with the benefit of a grant from Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, The Thirteenth Five-Year National Key Research & Development Projects (Project No. 2016YFC0702005-04, 2016YFC0701600).
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State-of-the-Art Review of Virtual Reality Environment Applications in Construction Safety
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