A Graph-Based Approach to Minimize Redundant Spatial Computations for Automated Construction Safety Prevention through Design and Planning

Safety planning is currently a manual and labor-intensive task. As a response, there has been active research on automated safety planning approaches. With the emergence of digital twins and the increased temporal resolution of updates on the status of a construction site, automated approaches for safety analysis will be necessary to exploit this increasing quantity of data. Nevertheless, creating a digital representation of the construction site and performing safety planning is computationally complex and intensive. It is not feasible to re-compute the safety assessment of the entire construction situation from scratch for every change that occurs. This work presents a novel approach to capture incremental localized changes happening in the construction situation, that is, when one or more elements are constructed, but the rest of the site remains unchanged. The changes are captured in a graph-based structure where the affected safety elements can efficiently and rapidly be extracted, facilitating a targeted re-computation. This work also demonstrates other benefits of the graph, such as improved decision support for construction planning.