A communication system to support evacuation route in the building construction project

Abstract

In the past decade, emergencies have occurred in construction projects, directly influencing injuries and casualties due to the dynamic nature of construction. Currently, the practice of developing evacuation routes for most construction projects is presented in a static and non-interactive manner. This involves a two-dimensional evacuation plan that cannot provide a real-time evacuation route. Furthermore, some emergency signs are unclear and do not provide the correct evacuation routedue to construction activities not aligning with the construction progress. Therefore, conventional evacuation plans have limitations and require improvement. Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Augmented Reality (AR) can present the evacuation route position of exit in a three-dimensional and can update the construction work following the construction progress. The objective of this research is to develop a communication system to support the evacuation route in a dynamic nature to assist construction workers and staff in accessing evacuation information such as appropriate evacuation route exit voice and arrow direction distance from the current location to the exit and obstacle avoidance in the construction project. In addition, to validate the proposed system approach, the case study uses Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Augmented Reality (AR), and a real construction project is executed. Moreover, three engineers, four trainees, and five construction workers participated in evacuating the proposed system. The result indicated that the proposed system could provide the correct evacuation route following the dynamic nature of the construction project.