A study of automated intelligent monitoring of scaffolding safety for construction projects

ABSTRACT

In recent years, scaffolding has been widely used in construction in advanced industrial countries in Europe, the Americas, and Asia as a temporary facility for new construction and demolition projects. However, in the complex environment of a construction site, temporary facilities such as scaffolding are only managed by the governments of these various countries via the legal system and are inspected through manual observation, resulting in numerous occupational hazards. Today, the lack of attention to temporary structures such as multi-degree-of-freedom discrete structures (e.g. scaffolding) has resulted in a failure to effectively improve the safety, quality, and performance of scaffolded temporary structures. In this study, the scaffolding system of a costly construction site in Taiwan is used as a case study. A BIM model of scaffolding is built based on the unique geographical location of Taiwan and external factors such as earthquakes and typhoons. The study even uses ETABS structural software to identify the structure of scaffolding and analyze the important monitoring points in order to establish a ’scaffolding intelligent monitoring system’ to effectively control the hazards of scaffolding as a medium, thus achieving the goal of construction safety during construction phase.

CO EDITOR-IN-CHIEF:

• Ou, Yu-Chen

ASSOCIATE EDITOR:

• Ou, Yu-Chen

KEYWORDS:

• Temporary structures
• scaffolding system
• BIM model
• scaffolding intelligent monitoring system

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.