FEATURE but in the workplace environment head injuries account for 20 % of overall injuries . Alarmingly , it has been reported that in the US alone , 84 % of fatal head injuries are sustained by employees not wearing head protection , and research shows that deaths and injuries are increasing .
Site managers are under pressure to keep a constant lookout for those flouting the rules , which is not an easy task in a distracting environment with constant noise , vehicles , materials and people on the move . Wearing the wrong headgear , or refusing to wear it altogether , not only increases the potential for injury from falling objects , slips and trips , but can cost businesses significant amounts of money in compensation pay-outs and lost labour time . For these reasons , construction businesses are turning to solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence ( AI ) to help them tighten up and enforce health and safety protocols .
Analysing a scene using onboard analytics
Cameras acting as sensors with onboard analytics can intelligently detect whether workers are wearing safety headgear from the moment they enter a hazardous location . In addition , peoplecounting analytics can record the workers present and determine the number , if any , that are not wearing appropriate protection . Here
an announcement can be triggered through an IP speaker to remind operatives of the correct protocols , with an alert sent to management for non-compliance .
While it sounds almost futuristic , this technology is here today . Cameras with onboard objectanalytics capabilities can be trained on data depicting a wide range of business-relevant scenarios so that information from any given scene can be compared against learned rules . A camera that detects an object coming into the field of view will be able to firstly tell that it is an object , and secondly , differentiate between , for example , a person or a vehicle by comparing the scene against thousands of stored images . And the more data that is available , the smarter the analytics will become .
Advanced solutions to complex processes
Having established a working protocol the industry can now get even more granular . As an example , datasets of people wearing and not wearing hats can be used to differentiate between hard hats intended for groundwork – complying with the regulation EN397 , or for working at height – complying with EN12492 for additional protection . Surveillance cameras can use AI algorithms to ‘ learn ’ what the appropriate hard hat looks like . Anyone not wearing a hard hat that is suitable
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