Remote Construction Worker Location, Activity and Safety Monitoring

Data fusion can be defined as a process for integrating information from multiple and heterogeneous sources to obtain a composite and augmented inference about the state of an entity. Data fusion has been successfully applied in several fields. Its usefulness is becoming evident for the enhancement of automated and remote monitoring systems of construction sites. Current technology allows the development of integrated systems able to autonomously and remotely document and track work site operations. Applications have so far focused on tracking material and equipment. Little work has been done on continuous remote monitoring of construction workers. This paper addresses the benefits and limitations of two remote sensing technologies: Physiological Status Monitors (PSMs) and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) systems, which allow real-time tracking of construction workers’ location and physiological status. The scope of this paper is to evaluate the possibility of fusing data from a PSM and an UWB system to obtain an augmented knowledge of workers’ status and so compensate for existing limitations. Thus, the research team is developing and testing an algorithm that is able to process the collected data to establish the position, the activity, and the safety behavior of the monitored subjects during simulated construction tasks.