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1. Working-Memory Load as a Factor Determining the Safety Performance of Construction Workers

   Liko, G. ; Esmaeili, B. ; Hasanzadeh, S. ; Dodd, M. D. ; and Brock, R. ( March 2020 , Construction Research Congress 2020)

   Cognitive processes have been found to contribute substantially to the human errors that lead to construction accidents. Working memory—a cognitive system with a limited capacity that is responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing—plays an important role in reasoning and decision-making. Since eye movements indicate where a worker directs his/her attention, tracking such movements provides a practical way to measure workers’ attention and comprehension of construction hazards. As a departure in construction industry research, this study correlates attentional allocation with working memory to assess workers’ situation awareness under different scenarios that expose workers to various hazards. To achieve this goal, this study merges research linking eye movements and workers’ attention with research focused on working-memory load and decision making and evaluates what, how, and where a worker distributes his/her attention while performing a task under different working-memory loads. Path analysis models then examined the direct and indirect effect of different working-memory loads on hazard identification performance. The independent variable (working-memory load) is linked to the dependent variable (hazard identification) through the set of mediators (attention metrics). The results showed that the high-memory load condition delayed workers’ hazard identification. The findings of this study emphasize the important role working memorymore »plays in determining how and why workers in dynamic work environments fail to detect, comprehend, and/or respond to physical risks.« less
2. The Role of Work Experience on Hazard Identification: Assessing the Mediating Effect of Inattention Under Fall-Hazard Conditions

   Aroke, O. ; Esmaeili, B. ; Hasanzadeh, S. ; Dodd, M. D. ; and Brock, R. ( March 2020 , Construction Research Congress 2020)

   One of the main contributors to the human errors that lead to catastrophic injuries in the construction workplace is the failure to identify hazards as a result of poor attention or cognitive lapses. To address this safety concern, the present study used eye-tracking technology to assess how the association between work experience and hazard identification may be mediated due to inattention. A mediation analysis was conducted and tested using a bias-corrected bootstrapping technique with 5000 resamples. The results estimate the direct and indirect effects of work experience on the hazard identification skills of construction workers observing varying hazardous conditions. The results of the mediation analysis confirm that inattention—demonstrated via inattentiveness toward hazards—mediates the relationship between work experience and hazard identification. Specifically, though work experience and dwell time positively correlate with hazard identification, the direct effect of work experience on hazard identification is attenuated with the inclusion of the mediator variables in the model, thus suggesting attentional impairment offsets the benefits of work experience. The outcomes of this study will enable researchers and safety practitioners to harness real-time eye-movement patterns to identify the precursors of cognitive failure, deficient attentional allocation, and poor visual search strategies, all of which may put workersmore »at risk on construction sites. The results also facilitate the provision of personalized safety feedback to workers and the design of training interventions that will address unique performance deficiencies in workers to prevent the human errors that cause injuries in dynamic environments.« less
3. Examining the Relationship between Personality Characteristics and Worker’s Attention under Fall and Tripping Hazard Conditions

   https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784481288.040  

   Hasanzadeh, Sogand ; Esmaeili, Behzad ; Dodd, Michael D. ( March 2018 , Construction Research Congress 2018 April 2–4, 2018 | New Orleans, Louisiana)

   A worker’s attentional and cognitive failures—such as lack of attention, failure to identify a tripping hazard, or misperception about a hazard’s risks—can lead to unsafe behaviors and, consequently, accidents. Previous literature has shown that individual characteristics such as personality may affect human’s selective attention. However, few studies have attempted to empirically examine how a worker’s personality affects attention and situation awareness on a jobsite. The present study examines how workers’ emotional stability (neuroticism) affects their cognitive failures (especially attentional failure) when they are exposed to fall-to-same-level hazardous conditions. To achieve this goal—and given that eye movements represent the most direct manifestation of visual attention—the personalities of construction workers were assessed via self-completion questionnaires, and their attention and situation awareness were monitored continuously and in real-time using a mobile wearable eye-tracking apparatus. Correlational analyses revealed the significant relationship between neuroticism and the attentional distribution of workers. These results suggest that workers do not allocate their attention equally to all hazardous areas and these differences in attentional distribution are modulated by personality characteristics (neuroticism). A more detailed investigation of this connection yielded a specific pattern: less neurotic workers periodically look down and scan ahead to obtain feedforward information about tripping hazards, andmore »these individuals remain fully aware of the environment and its associated hazards. The findings of this study suggest the value assessing personality to identify workers who are more likely to be involved in accidents.« less
4. Toward Personalized Safety Training: Automating the Classification of Construction Workers’ Cognitive Failures

   Lee, Kyeongsuk ; Shinde, Yugandhar ; Hasanzadeh, Sogand ; Esmaeili, Behzad.  ( January 2022 , ISARC. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction; Waterloo)

   Safety training has long been considered a promising method to enhance workers’ hazard identification skills within construction sites. To improve the effectiveness of safety training, such varied features as a training environment, individuals’ learning ability, and lesson personalization have been investigated. However, as records show workers still miss hazards even after receiving safety training, understanding the fundamental cognitive reasons for unrecognized hazards becomes a crucial step toward developing effective personalized safety training. This study used various 360° panoramas of construction scenarios to empirically examine 30 workers’ visual search strategies and assess workers’ hazard identification skills. Results suggest several cognitive limitations caused failures in hazard recognition, including attentional failure, inattentional blindness, and low perceived risk. Based on these findings, this study proposes a personalized safety training framework to address such cognitive limitations to improve occupational safety in the construction industry
5. Impact of Immersive Training on Senior Chemical Engineering Students' Prioritization of Process Safety Decision Criteria

   Stransky, J. ( July 2021 , ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Process safety is becoming a greater focus of chemical plant design and operation due to the number of incidents involving dangerous chemical accidents. Since its creation nearly 20 years ago, the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has investigated 130 safety incidents and provided over 800 safety recommendations to operating chemical facilities. Following a gas well blowout in 2018, the CSB gave a recommendation to the American Petroleum Institute (API) to establish recommended practice on alarm management. Similarly, in 2017, the CSB gave a recommendation to Arkema Inc. to update their emergency response training following a hurricane that caused a fire at one of their manufacturing sites. Many times, CSB-led investigations resulted in new regulations and standards that are enforced by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). These critical recommendations positively impact not only the plant workers but also the surrounding community and the environment. While these safety measures enhance industrial safety culture, it is important that process safety also be integrated into university-level engineering curricula to promote safety culture while future engineers are still developing. Integrating process safety into the curriculum prepares students by familiarizing them with the difficult decisions they will be requiredmore »to make in professional practice. ABET, the engineering program accreditation body, acknowledges the value of early, appropriate training within their program guidelines “Criteria for Chemical Engineering Curriculum” which states that recognition and assessment of the hazards associated with chemical processes must be included in the curriculum for program accreditation. Based on this requirement, many institutions have taken the approach to integrate process safety into their curriculum using video case studies, adding entire courses to cover hazard identification, and including safety lectures in design courses. A common theme missing from these methods is instruction on how to approach, recognize, and navigate decisions within a process safety context; a lack of this situational awareness was noted as a key element in industrial process safety incidents. Understanding how students approach process safety decisions is important for developing teaching methods and curriculum that will better prepare them for professional practice. As part of this study, we will measure how students rank criteria associated with process safety decisions, and how these prioritizations change after exposure to a process safety decision making intervention. Through this work, we hope to determine how process safety curriculum may be improved to help better prepare students for process safety decisions within industry.« less