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 academicfifield, 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 difffferent
perspectives including (1) technology characteristics; (2) application
domains; (3) safety enhancement mechanisms; and (4) safety assess
ment and evaluation. It was also found that numerous VR/AR systems
had been proved as effiffifficient, usable, applicable and accurate ap
proaches in hazards identifification, safety training and education, safety
inspection and introduction (SeeTable 2). Hazardous construction
scenarios have also been simulated interactively, and VR/AR safety
enhancement mechanisms have been proposed in the aspects of the
working environment, workers' behavior, high-risk equipment, and
working sequence. The analysis of these contributions to VR/AR-CS
research may also facilitate scholars and professionals to seek further
collaborative research opportunities.
Identifification of research trends in VR/AR-CS allows industry pro
fessionals to appreciate the critical concerns in VR/AR-CS development
and to better prevent and control the construction safety issues by ad
vanced technologies[87]. This study is an attempt to synthesize the
current body of knowledge related to the applications of VR/AR en
vironments in the construction safety. In the future, research on VR/AR
CS will cover numerous disciplines including construction engineering,
ICT tools, safety science, ergonomics, and psychology. Such multi
disciplinary research is also an essential driver for VR/AR-CS innova
tions. Given these and the summary of challenges inTable 2,fifive trends
of future development are anticipated: (1) the increasing rate of com
plex construction engineering could result in more intractable safety
issues, the ICT tools with VR/AR support are the vital tools to be de
veloped for achieving practical functions in improving safety perfor
mance; (2) the body of knowledge on safety science will contribute to
more clear principles to support the VR/AR methods or tools for solving
construction safety issues; (3) the approaches on ergonomics con
sidering numerous human factors could become one of the critical as
sessment on VR/AR-CS systems; (4) the applicable theories in psy
chology will be adopted to make more situational experiments for
evaluating the application effffect of VR/AR-CS systems; and (5) thefifiner
details of VR/AR environment are expected to attract signifificant at
tention on establishing more safety incidents' simulations to specififically
examine and discuss the immediate reaction and response of workers.
These development trends could make an optimal combination to im
prove the future safety management in construction industry.
Although much effffort has been made to review the signifificant de
velopments in VR/AR-CS research, it is acknowledged that this review
is not exhaustive and only limited to the construction industry. Future
research effffort should be directed towards VR/AR-based safety man
agement in other sectors. A benchmark or baseline for various functions
and experimental evaluation methods of VR/AR safety systems in dif
ferent projects or work tasks has not been thoroughly discussed.
Therefore, more research effffort should be put in this direction. This is
no doubt as well that the overall improvement of VR/AR-CS cannot be
achieved without the integrated and concerted effffort of all laboratory
based and project-based applications at the technical, experimental,
and organizational levels.
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