Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Automation in Construction journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon Construction safety planning: Site-specific temporal and spatial information integration Sooyoung Choe a,⁎ , Fernanda Leite b a Department of Technology Policy Research, Construction & Economy Research Institute of Korea, South Korea b Construction Engineering and Project Management Program, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Construction safety Safety planning Safety risk 4D BIM Temporal and spatial information ABSTRACT The Occupational Safety and Health Act was established in 1970. Since then, various injury prevention strategies have been developed and resulted in measurable improvements in construction safety management. However, the last decade has seen a deceleration in construction safety improvements, which may be due to the dynamic nature of construction jobsites. Traditional safety planning approaches rely primarily on static information, tacit knowledge, regulations, company safety policies, and 2-dimensional (2D) drawings. As a result, site-specific dynamic information, temporal (e.g. when and who will be exposed to potential hazards) and spatial (e.g. location of dangerous zones) information are currently not specifically addressed. This paper presents a for- malized 4-dimensional (4D) construction safety planning process that addresses site-specific temporal and spatial safety information integration. The authors integrated safety data, which includes general safety knowledge, site-specific temporal and spatial information, from a project schedule and a 3-dimensional (3D) model. The authors conducted a case study to test and verify the proposed safety planning process. Findings show that risky activities, days, and zones can be prioritized when project schedule contains activity information regarding number of workers including occupation types and zoning plan. In addition, activity safety risk can be visualized when a 3D model is integrated. The proposed safety planning approach is expected to provide safety personnel with a proactive and site-specific safety planning tool that can be used to better manage jobsite safety. In addition, visual safety materials can enhance safety communication among project participants. 1. Introduction The Occupational Safety and Health Act was established in 1970 and places the responsibility of construction safety on the employer. Since then, various injury prevention strategies have been developed and resulted in a measureable improvement in construction safety management [1]. However, the last decade has seen a deceleration in construction safety improvements and, in 2013, the fatality rate of the construction industry is still 2.9 times higher than other industries [2]. Safety management can be defined as a systematic and compre- hensive process for managing safety risk [3]. According to British Standards Institution [3], the main components of safety management are: 1) safety policy, including safety commitment of top management, 2) safety risk management, such as hazard identification, risk analysis, and risk control, 3) safety implementation, including safety meeting/ training, and 4) safety inspection. However, previous studies in the construction industry pointed out that safety programs are typically developed in an informal way [4], and safety risk analyses at construction sites are not often performed [5]. To improve safety planning, Yi and Langford [6] emphasize the importance of integration between safety management and scheduling. Hazardous situations vary during project lifetime and the schedule should be considered for safety planning [6]. However, current safety planning approaches do not consider frequent updates of a project schedule to address dynamic changes of expected hazards and safety controls. In order to create more effective site-specific safety plans, it is important to integrate safety plans and project schedules. Another challenge of site-specific safety planning is lack of safety sources utilized. While information technology-based approaches, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), have been widely used for project planning and progress monitoring, construction safety planning is still highly dependent on traditional sources such as 2D drawings, paper-based regulations, and tacit information [7]. As a result, current safety planning approaches limit the ability to identify and analyze hazards prior to construction and can potentially be improved by leveraging information technology. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2017.09.007 Received 1 August 2016; Received in revised form 3 July 2017; Accepted 12 September 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: sooyoung.choe@cerik.re.kr (S. Choe), fernanda.leite@utexas.edu (F. Leite). Automation in Construction 84 (2017) 335–344 0926-5805/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. MARK