Literature Review of Digital Twins Applications in Construction Workforce Safety

Abstract

For many decades, safety has been a challenge in the construction sector. Despite extensive efforts to improve overall safety, the sector’s casualty rate still remains high. In practice, dynamic and complex construction processes may lead to on-site risks and safety plans being overlooked, likely leading to a variety of safety accidents. Nowadays, under the guidance of the digital twins (DT) concept, the advent of state-of-the-art sensing and visualisation technologies has offered the possibility to improve construction health and safety in the workplace. To understand the research advances of these technologies, identify their gaps and challenges, and propose solutions to further advance the industry’s safety, we conducted and report a thorough review on the state-of-the-art technological studies, and elaborate upon the key findings in detail. For instance, despite DT being proven to be effective in improving construction workforce safety, the construction industry has yet to fully exploit and streamline these innovations in practice. Overall, this review provides insights into technological clustering, improvement strategies, as well as workforce safety, which can benefit from formulating effective digital technology paradigms.