Increasing Work Zone Safety: Worker Behavioral Analysis with Integration of Wearable Sensors and Virtual Reality

Despite increased regulations, restrictive measures, and devices used for warning, work zone injuries and fatalities are still observed at highway construction projects with alarms/notifications being ignored. With a vision to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities, this project aims to understand the key parameters (e.g., work zone location characteristics, personal vigilance levels, types of construction work) that play roles in achieving responsive behaviors in workers. Key questions this research answers are, at what conditions people ignore/response to warnings at work zones? How we can calibrate notification systems for getting responsive actions from workers? What are the modalities, frequencies, and timings of pushing notifications in these calibrated systems? Through wearable sensors and realistic representations of work zones in virtual reality, the research team plans to collect worker behavioral and physiological (heart rate) responses to alarms/warnings/notifications issued under various realistic scenarios and modalities of warning mechanisms (e.g., sensory, visual, audial). With a reinforcement learning based approach, the collected data will be used for determining expected worker/driver behaviors (validated through subjects’ heart rate data) when prompted with an alarm/warning/notification learned from similar behaviors. The outcome of this research will help to calibrate when, at what frequency, and how to (with what modalities) share warnings with habitants of work zones for effective responses towards reduction of incidents.

• Record URL:
  https://c2smarter.engineering.nyu.edu/increasing-work-zone-safety-worker-behavioral-analysis-with-integration-of-wearable-sensors-and-virtual-reality/

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Funding: $108148
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3551747124

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Connected Cities for Smart Mobility towards Accessible and Resilient Transportation Center (C2SMART)

  New York University
  Tandon School of Engineering
  Brooklyn, NY  United States 
• Performing Organizations:

  Connected Cities for Smart Mobility towards Accessible and Resilient Transportation Center (C2SMART)

  New York University
  Tandon School of Engineering
  Brooklyn, NY  United States 

  New York University Tandon School of Engineering

  6 Metrotech Center
  Brooklyn, NY  United States  11201
• Principal Investigators:

  Ergan, Semiha

• Start Date: 20190301
• Expected Completion Date: 20200531
• Actual Completion Date: 20200615
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Behavior; Calibration; Construction and maintenance personnel; Construction safety; Heart rate; Sensors; Virtual reality; Warning devices; Warning signals; Work zone safety; Work zone traffic control
• Subject Areas: Construction; Highways; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01705187
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Connected Cities for Smart Mobility towards Accessible and Resilient Transportation Center (C2SMART)
• Contract Numbers: 69A3551747124
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: May 22 2019 1:19PM