The potential of construction robotics to reduce airborne virus transmission in the construction industry in the UK and China.

This paper aims to identify construction robotics' potential to reduce airborne virus transmission, review factors limiting the technology's adoption and highlight how similar barriers have been addressed in other industries. Construction robotics were identified and classified into 8 themes with 25 categories through a critical literature review. We undertook interviews with 4 construction contractors and conducted an online questionnaire with 32 experts from the UK (n=14) and China (n=18) who reviewed the robotic systems we identified and ranked the potential ability of each to reduce airborne virus transmission within the construction industry. The results of this study showed that construction robotics is not only beneficial to reduce airborne virus transmission, but may also help to reduce the spread of future contagious viruses. We found no significant difference (P>0.05) in practical usage and implementation barriers to construction robotics between the UK and China. Cost, training and limited awareness of robotic technologies were the main implementation barriers we identified in both countries. Both the UK and China may need to adopt strategies such as providing more financial support to small construction industries and skill training which are utilised successfully in other sectors to realise the potential of construction robotic technologies.

A systematic review of the application of immersive technologies for safety and health management in the construction sector.

INTRODUCTION: The construction industry employs about 7% of global manpower and contributes about 6% to the global economy. However, statistics have depicted that the construction industry contributes significantly to workplace fatalities and injuries despite multiple interventions (including technological applications) implemented by governments and construction companies. Recently, immersive technologies as part of a suite of industry 4.0 technologies, have also strongly emerged as a viable pathway to help address poor construction occupational safety and health (OSH) performance. METHOD: With the aim of gaining a broad view of different construction OSH issues addressed using immersive technologies, a review on the application of immersive technologies for construction OSH management is conducted using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis (PRISMA) approach and bibliometric analysis of literature. This resulted in the evaluation of 117 relevant papers collected from three online databases (Scopus, Web of Science, and Engineering Village). RESULTS: The review revealed that literature have focused on the application of various immersive technologies for hazard identification and visualization, safety training, design for safety, risk perception, and assessment in various construction works. The review identified several limitations regarding the use of immersive technologies, which include the low level of adoption of the developed immersive technologies for OSH management by the construction industry, very limited research on the application of immersive technologies for health hazards, and limited focus on the comparison of the effectiveness of various immersive technologies for construction OSH management. CONCLUSIONS AND PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: For future research, it is recommended to identify possible reasons for the low transition level from research to industry practice and proffer solutions to the identified issues. Another recommendation is the study of the effectiveness of the use of immersive technologies for addressing health hazards in comparison to the conventional methods.

Dataset of characterised construction safety risks and related treatments.

The Safety Risk Library [1] is a structured database [2] that integrates knowledge drawn from multiple sources to address the problem of information disaggregation in the construction industry. This knowledge base maps construction safety risk scenarios to treatment suggestions that help designers implement the concept of prevention through design. In the context of the Safety Risk Library, risk scenarios are characterised by six data categories based on a formalised ontology [3]. To build the first iteration of the Safety Risk Library, nine different risk scenarios were identified and mapped to relevant risk treatments in focus groups. Subsequently, the Safety Risk Library was pilot tested in six construction projects, and user feedback and input were used to expand the list of risk scenarios and treatment prompts. Additionally, public press releases reporting construction accidents were analysed to identify and characterise risk scenarios, which were then mapped to appropriate treatment suggestions and included in the Safety Risk Library. This dataset can assist construction industry stakeholders in identifying, characterising, communicating and mitigating safety risks in construction projects. It can also be integrated into building information modelling environments to assist designers to implement prevention through design.

Post pandemic fatigue: what are effective strategies?

Recurrent updates in non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) aim to control successive waves of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) but are often met with low adherence by the public. This study evaluated the effectiveness of gathering restrictions and quarantine policies based on a modified Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Hospitalized-Recovered (SEIHR) model by incorporating cross-boundary travellers with or without quarantine to study the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 with data spanning a nine-month period during 2020 in Hong Kong. The asymptotic stability of equilibria reveals that the model exhibits the phenomenon of backward bifurcation, which in this study is a co-existence between a stable disease-free equilibrium (DFE) and an endemic equilibrium (EE). Even if the basic reproduction number ([Formula: see text]) is less than unity, this disease cannot be eliminated. The effect of each parameter on the overall dynamics was assessed using Partial Rank Correlation Coefficients (PRCCs). Transmission rates (i.e., [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]), effective contact ratio [Formula: see text] between symptomatic individuals and quarantined people, and transfer rate [Formula: see text] related to infection during quarantine were identified to be the most sensitive parameters. The effective contact ratios between the infectors and susceptible individuals in late July were found to be over twice as high as that in March of 2020, reflecting pandemic fatigue and the potential existence of infection during quarantine.

Molecular epidemiology and household transmission of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus in Hong Kong.

This study evaluated the clinical and epidemiologic features of individuals with community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) in Hong Kong from January 2004 through December 2005. Twenty-four episodes of skin and soft tissue infections and 1 episode of meningitis due to CA-MRSA were identified. CA-MRSA infections or carriage was found in 6 (13%) of 46 household contacts. A total of 29 isolates were analyzed by the Staphylococcus cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), and multilocus sequence typing. In addition, polymerase chain reaction detection of the genes encoding Panton-Valentine leukocidin was also carried out. It was observed that 24 had SCCmec IV/IVA and 5 had SCCmec V, and 23 were pvl positive. PFGE analysis clustered all except 1 isolate into 3 pulsed-field types (PFTs), HKU100 through HKU300. The HKU100 isolates had genotype ST30-IV identical to the Southwest Pacific clone. The HKU200 isolates belonged to ST59-V and were multiresistant, including an ermB-mediated macrolide resistance trait, which is characteristic of the predominant CA-MRSA clone in Taiwan. The HKU300 isolates had unique features (ST8, Panton-Valentine leukocidin negative, and SCCmec IVA) typical of CA-MRSA in Japan. In conclusion, CA-MRSA has a propensity to spread within families. Our findings showed that CA-MRSA strains in Hong Kong have diverse genetic backgrounds.

Building a womb-to-tomb health record in Hong Kong--an application of information architecture.

The Hospital Authority developed the Information Architecture (IA) model in 2002 to support a fast, robust, flexible and accurate electronic patient record (ePR) to meet the high-tempo health care environment in Hong Kong. With several successful applications in sharing data that were created for the same patients in various systems, the IA model was further developed to extend the longitudinal ePR to include one's fetal data as entered in the mother's record. This paper describes how various IA elements: Section, View, Form, Group, Entity, Content, Document supports the building of a true womb-to-tomb ePR for the HA patients. The future focus of Information Architecture in the HA will include building a Information Architecture Management System and linking the ePR with other patient records in the community.

Understanding the relationship between safety investment and safety performance of construction projects through agent-based modeling.

The construction industry in Hong Kong increased its safety investment by 300% in the past two decades; however, its accident rate has plateaued to around 50% for one decade. Against this backdrop, researchers have found inconclusive results on the causal relationship between safety investment and safety performance. Using agent-based modeling, this study takes an unconventional bottom-up approach to study safety performance on a construction site as an outcome of a complex system defined by interactions among a worksite, individual construction workers, and different safety investments. Instead of focusing on finding the absolute relationship between safety investment and safety performance, this study contributes to providing a practical framework to investigate how different safety investments interacting with different parameters such as human and environmental factors could affect safety performance. As a result, we could identify cost-effective safety investments under different construction scenarios for delivering optimal safety performance.