Information technology and safety: Integrating empirical safety risk data with building information modeling, sensing, and visualization technologies

Purpose The architecture, engineering and construction industry is known to account for a disproportionate rate of disabling injuries and fatalities. Information technologies show promise for improving safety performance. This paper aims to describe the current state of knowledge in this domain and introduces a framework to integrate attribute-level safety risk data within existing technologies for the first time. Design/methodology/approach The framework is demonstrated by integrating attribute safety risk data with information retrieval, location and tracking systems, augmented reality and building information models. Findings Fundamental attributes of a work environment can be assigned to construction elements during design and planning. Once assigned, existing risk and predictive models can be leveraged to provide a user with objective, empirically driven feedback including quantity of safety risk, predictions of safety outcomes and clashes among incompatible attributes. Practical implications This framework can provide designers, planners and managers with unbiased safety feedback that increases in detail and accuracy as the project develops. Such information can support prevention through design and safety management in advanced work packaging. Originality/value The framework is the first to integrate empirical risk-based safety data with construction information technologies. The results provide users with insight that is unexpected, counter-intuitive or otherwise thought-provoking.