TY - JOUR
T1 - Wristband-type wearable health devices to measure construction workers' physical demands
AU - Hwang, Sungjoo
AU - Lee, Sang Hyun
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge their industry partners for their help in data collection, as well as anonymous participants who participated in the data collection. Also, the authors wish to thank Chinmay Dinesh Vaidya, Justin Jacob Sam, and Hao Zhu, graduate students at the University of Michigan for their assistance in collecting data. The authors also wish to acknowledge financial support from the University of Michigan Third Century Initiative and MCubed programs. Finally, the first author wishes to acknowledge financial support by the Ewha Womans University Research Grant of 2017.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2017/11
Y1 - 2017/11
N2 - Recent advancements in wearable health devices equipped with biosensor systems (e.g., heart rate (HR) sensor) have provided an ample opportunity to continuously measure and understand workers' physical demands from construction work. Specifically, a relative measurement of physical demands, which is a percentage of HR reserve (%HRR), is convenient and useful by normalizing individual differences of HR. Since affordable HR monitoring using wearable devices (particularly, a comfortable wristband-type device: wristband hereafter) becomes available, %HRR-based physical demand measurement, which can be continuously calculated without interfering with workers' ongoing work, provides an enormous potential to protect workers' safety and health and to sustain expected productivity. This research investigates the usefulness of affordable %HRR-based physical demand measurement using a wristband from a case study of 19 workers in construction sites. The aim of the analysis is to examine the potential of this continuous measurement in capturing any significant physical demand variations, by investigating in-depth information on factors affecting physical demands (e.g., work tasks, individual and environmental factors). The results show that workers' physical demands are highly variable according to their working patterns (i.e., direct work, and indirect work including tool/equipment/material handling, traveling, and preparatory work), combined influences of work tasks, as well as individual and environmental factors (e.g., age and heat stress). These results demonstrate the need for continuous physical measurement during workers' ongoing work so that any significant high physical demands, which need to be avoided if possible, can be captured. The findings of this paper show that the continuous measurement of physical demands using a wristband provides rich information to understand, manage, and design physically demanding construction work (e.g., flexible work-rest cycle and managing demanding indirect work) by balancing workloads throughout a day and/or reducing unnecessary physical demands beyond direct work. By anticipating potential health and safety problems from excessive physical demands, as well as productivity loss before they occur, this research will have an ameliorative impact across the construction industry.
AB - Recent advancements in wearable health devices equipped with biosensor systems (e.g., heart rate (HR) sensor) have provided an ample opportunity to continuously measure and understand workers' physical demands from construction work. Specifically, a relative measurement of physical demands, which is a percentage of HR reserve (%HRR), is convenient and useful by normalizing individual differences of HR. Since affordable HR monitoring using wearable devices (particularly, a comfortable wristband-type device: wristband hereafter) becomes available, %HRR-based physical demand measurement, which can be continuously calculated without interfering with workers' ongoing work, provides an enormous potential to protect workers' safety and health and to sustain expected productivity. This research investigates the usefulness of affordable %HRR-based physical demand measurement using a wristband from a case study of 19 workers in construction sites. The aim of the analysis is to examine the potential of this continuous measurement in capturing any significant physical demand variations, by investigating in-depth information on factors affecting physical demands (e.g., work tasks, individual and environmental factors). The results show that workers' physical demands are highly variable according to their working patterns (i.e., direct work, and indirect work including tool/equipment/material handling, traveling, and preparatory work), combined influences of work tasks, as well as individual and environmental factors (e.g., age and heat stress). These results demonstrate the need for continuous physical measurement during workers' ongoing work so that any significant high physical demands, which need to be avoided if possible, can be captured. The findings of this paper show that the continuous measurement of physical demands using a wristband provides rich information to understand, manage, and design physically demanding construction work (e.g., flexible work-rest cycle and managing demanding indirect work) by balancing workloads throughout a day and/or reducing unnecessary physical demands beyond direct work. By anticipating potential health and safety problems from excessive physical demands, as well as productivity loss before they occur, this research will have an ameliorative impact across the construction industry.
KW - Activity analysis
KW - Heart rate reserve
KW - Occupational health and safety
KW - Physical demands
KW - Wearable devices
KW - Work physiology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85020903257&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.autcon.2017.06.003
DO - 10.1016/j.autcon.2017.06.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85020903257
SN - 0926-5805
VL - 83
SP - 330
EP - 340
JO - Automation in Construction
JF - Automation in Construction
ER -