Critical Analysis of the Evaluation Methods of Extended Reality (XR) Experiences for Construction Safety.

The construction industry has high accident rates. The sector is exploring various tools to improve safety management, training, and awareness to achieve zero accidents. This work focuses on extended reality (XR), which encompasses virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) technologies. Several authors have developed training experiences for construction safety in XR environments with positive conclusions about their effectiveness. However, there is no standardization regarding the evaluation methods used in the sector, and many experiences do not use any method. This lack is critical, as whenever the aim is to evaluate the degree of awareness of security issues, the implementation of evaluation systems is indispensable to make known the methods used in the literature to evaluate the effectiveness of the experiences and represent support for future research. This research identifies developments in XR experiences and analyzes the validation methods through a systematic review using the PRISMA methodology. It identifies two evaluation methods, objective and subjective, which are each broken down into four categories. The results show the types of evaluation, safety-related purposes, and safety application objectives used by the database classification.

Implementation of Facility Management for Port Infrastructure through the Use of UAVs, Photogrammetry and BIM.

The maintenance of port infrastructures presents difficulties due to their location: an aggressive environment or the variability of the waves can cause progressive deterioration. Maritime conditions make inspections difficult and, added to the lack of use of efficient tools for the management of assets, planning maintenance, important to ensure operability throughout the life cycle of port infrastructures, is generally not a priority. In view of these challenges, this research proposes a methodology for the creation of a port infrastructure asset management tool, generated based on the Design Science Research Method (DSRM), in line with Building Information Modeling (BIM) and digitization trends in the infrastructure sector. The proposal provides workflows and recommendations for the survey of port infrastructures from UAVs, the reconstruction of digital models by photogrammetry (due to scarce technical documentation), and the reconstruction of BIM models. Along with this, the bidirectional linking of traditional asset management spreadsheets with BIM models is proposed, by visual programming, allowing easy visualization of the status and maintenance requirements. This methodology was applied to a port infrastructure, where the methodology demonstrated the correct functionality of the asset management tool, which allows a constant up-dating of information regarding the structural state of the elements and the necessary maintenance activities.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for Physical Progress Monitoring of Construction.

The physical progress of a construction project is monitored by an inspector responsible for verifying and backing up progress information, usually through site photography. Progress monitoring has improved, thanks to advances in image acquisition, computer vision, and the development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). However, no comprehensive and simple methodology exists to guide practitioners and facilitate the use of these methods. This research provides recommendations for the periodic recording of the physical progress of a construction site through the manual operation of UAVs and the use of point clouds obtained under photogrammetric techniques. The programmed progress is then compared with the actual progress made in a 4D BIM environment. This methodology was applied in the construction of a reinforced concrete residential building. The results showed the methodology is effective for UAV operation in the work site and the use of the photogrammetric visual records for the monitoring of the physical progress and the communication of the work performed to the project stakeholders.