Scenarios of Fall Hazards for automated detection in building models

Although occupational safety is of high importance to both the employer and the employee in the field of construction, numerous fatal casualties still occur. Most fatalities during the construction of high-rise structures are... [ view full abstract ]

Although occupational safety is of high importance to both the employer and the employee in the field of construction, numerous fatal casualties still occur. Most fatalities during the construction of high-rise structures are due to falls from heights. In a significant number of falls the fall protection is missing. The reason for missing fall protection does not necessarily have to be the misbehavior of the workers. Root cause can also be found within insufficient planning of safety measures. This includes the lack of time or ability to analyze the construction surroundings and its respective hazards before construction start. Especially the process of manually detecting fall hazards in 2D drawings is often performed superficially. Even if fall hazards are identified, they are not explicitly added to the work schedule as discrete events or processes. This tedious process can be supported by IT-technologies. When the method of Building Information Modeling (BIM) is used in a project, the 4D building model could be automatically checked for potential fall hazards at any given point in time. In addition, the installation of fall protection systems can be automatically added to the work schedule as a necessary process. Although some promising research has been performed in this area, no consistent algorithm that identifies the entirety of fall hazards in a building model can be found. Among others, this is due to the variety of existing rules that identify falling edges for different element types, such as roofs, slabs or excavation pits. This means, that a separate algorithm and separate model requirements are needed for each individual element type. Therefore, we analyze current safety regulations and identify several scenarios of fall hazards, from which we derive the respective model requirements and general detection algorithms. Furthermore, we implement them prototypically into IFC-based model-viewing software. Our implementation demonstrates that the IT-supported fall hazard detection can help safety managers with an immediate and detailed planning of fall protection systems. This can ultimately help the workers on-site with a better preparation of safety measures and thus, help to prevent fatal casualties.