An Early Stage Development of Posture Model: To Prevent Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders on Construction Sites

Abstract

Aging of skilled construction workers has been a major problem throughout most of the developed countries including Korea. Physically demanding and repetitive work tasks have caused these aging workers in the construction industry to become more vulnerable to work-related musculoskeletal injuries

the disorders often lead to decrease in workers productivity. As a result, more and more Korean companies started to pay attention to health, safety and environment. Thus, this study introduces a posture model called the M2B2P model in order to robustly model brickmasons postures and three-dimensional (3D) geometries of workspace obstacles allowing virtual representations of the construction workers real work site environment. The 3D posture model can be further used for many applications by construction managers and safety managers to help manage recurring illnesses. Current construction site environment denote the utmost opportunity to ergonomically improve workspaces, which reduce risk of work-related musculoskeletal disorders of the workers. To investigate solution to this recurring problem, this study proposes a state-of-the-art model titled The M2B2P model that is based on the MBPP model from the previous literature. The previous 2D model is modified to 3D model along with other modification in terms of improved representation of construction worker and better representation of the actual construction site environment. The objective of this research is to help reduce the risks of work-related musculoskeletal disorders of construction workers by accurately identifying awkward postures and repetitive work – major causes for work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Using the Modified Memory Based Posture Planning (M2B2P) model, the 3D visualization of postures enables safety managers to easily identify potential awkward posture problems. Therefore, the suggested model will allow safety mangers to focus more on primary prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, which can be significantly reduced. The results of the M2B2P model show promising future application such as health monitoring system of construction workers. As discussed above, in this study we will only introduce the model development stage out of overall framework and test this model by running simple simulation representing average Korean brickmason. Although this is an early stage research study, there is a high anticipation that the result of this study will improve the health of construction workers.