Continuous monitoring of body temperature for objective detection of health and safety risks in construction sites: An analysis of the accuracy and comfort of off-the-shelf wearable sensors

Abstract

Recent studies have shown the potential of wearable sensors for objective detection of health and safety risks in construction workers through their collected physiological data. Body temperature, as the focus of the current study, is one of the most important physiological parameters that can help to detect various health and safety risks such as heat stress, physical fatigue, and infectious diseases. This study aims to assess the applicability and performance of off-the-shelf wearable sensor devices to monitor workers' body temperature in construction sites by evaluating the accuracy of temperature measurements as well as the comfort of the devices. A total of nine off-the-shelf wearable sensor devices available on the market were initially trialed in the laboratory, and three devices were shortlisted considering a set of selection criteria for further assessment. Over three weeks, the shortlisted wearable sensors were tested on 26 workers in two large construction sites in Australia. The reliability/validity of the selected wearable sensors in measuring body temperature was investigated using Bland-Altman analysis. Human factors were also investigated in terms of the comfort of the devices, their impact on workers' performance, and the acceptability of being worn for an extended period (i.e., 8 h or more). It was found that all selected devices measured body temperature with a bias of less than one indicating a slight difference in measurements compared to the reference hospital-grade thermometers. Two devices out of the three were also comfortable. The achieved results indicate that it is feasible to develop a continuous temperature monitoring platform using off-the-shelf wearable sensors to detect a range of significant health and safety risks in construction sites objectively. Considering the rapid advancements in manufacturing wearable sensors, future research can adopt a similar approach to include the newly introduced off-the-shelf temperature sensors and select the most appropriate device.

Keywords: Body temperature monitoring; Construction industry; Health; Safety; Wearable sensors.

Fig. 1

Wearable temperature monitoring devices used in this study a) VivaLNK b) °Temp-Cosinuss° c) Equivital EQ02.

Fig. 2

Data collection in Melbourne and Geelong construction sites using the three selected wearable sensors a) VivaLNK b) °Temp- Cosinuss° c) Equivital EQ02.

Fig. 3

Reference temperature reading on construction site by the registered nurse using the ear medical-grade thermometer.

Fig. 4

Data collection procedure in each working day (The workers were fitted with the wearable sensors during working hours and four 20 min times, including pre-work, smoking time, lunch time and post-work were determined for reference temperature reading).

Fig. 5

Data acquisition process (Workers fitted with the wearable sensors and their body temperature were recorded as reference points during the day by a registered nurse. The sensors were connected to the cloud and the monitoring dashboard through a custom-built phone application. Data quality monitoring and data analysis were conducted by the cloudadmin).

Fig. 6

Bland-Altman plot of three body-temperature sensors including (a) Cosinuss, (b) VivaLNK, and (c) Equivital sensor with reference to hospital grade inner ear thermometer.

Fig. 7

Bland-Altman plot of three body-temperature sensors including (a) Cosinuss, (b) VivaLNK,and (c) Equivital sensor with reference to the hospital grade axillary thermometer.

Fig. 8

Human factors evaluation based on the opinions of 26 workers: (a) the level of comfort experienced for each of the 3 wearable sensors, (b) the impact of each wearable sensor on the overall performance of workers, and (c) the practicality of wearing sensor devices for an extended period of 8 h or more.