AR Civil Engineering Advances Safety Management: The Path to Hazard Prediction and Zero Accidents

Table of Contents

• What is AR civil engineering?

• Safety management challenges at civil engineering sites

• How AR advances safety management and enables hazard prediction

• Case studies of safety management using AR

• AR’s prospects toward zero accidents

• Simplified surveying with LRTK: safe and efficient site measurement

• FAQ

On construction and civil engineering sites, "safety management" to protect workers is always the top priority. However, traditional safety measures alone cannot completely prevent human error and unforeseen hazards, and occupational accidents continue to occur. In fact, according to statistics from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, in 2022 there were as many as 232 deaths in the construction industry alone, remaining the highest number of fatalities among all industries. In this context, a new digital technology—AR (augmented reality)—is poised to bring innovation to safety management. By overlaying digital information on real-world footage, AR technology can dramatically improve on-site hazard prediction and information sharing, accelerating efforts to achieve "zero accidents." This article, titled "AR Civil Engineering Advances Safety Management: The Path to Hazard Prediction and Zero Accidents," explains in detail how AR technology is evolving safety management on civil engineering sites, covering the latest trends and case studies.

What is AR civil engineering?

First, let’s clarify what AR civil engineering means. AR (the application of augmented reality in the civil engineering field) is a technology that overlays digital data such as CG models and textual information onto real-world footage via devices like smartphones, tablets, or smart glasses. The breakthrough is that information that used to be viewable only on drawings or monitors can now be displayed integrated with the actual site view.

There are two main AR implementation approaches: location-based (identifying position via GPS, etc.) and image-recognition-based (recognizing objects or spaces from camera footage). In construction AR apps, the latter—especially markerless AR, which recognizes the space itself—is widely used. This enables accurate overlay of 3D models onto tablet camera footage without placing special markers on site, allowing intuitive visualization without complex alignment tasks.

For example, you can display a model of the completed structure aligned with the real landscape or highlight hazardous areas in a worker’s field of view. Recent smartphones and tablets have high-performance cameras and sensors, so AR can be used without specialized equipment. Major construction firms have also begun introducing AR on sites, and a new trend in Japan that could be called “AR civil engineering” is emerging.

Safety management challenges at civil engineering sites

Civil engineering and construction sites are constantly exposed to hazards such as working at height, operating heavy machinery, and deep excavations. Accordingly, sites have long implemented various safety measures such as safety patrols, KY (hazard prediction) activities during morning meetings, and strict enforcement of protective equipment use. Nevertheless, many occupational accidents still occur each year due to human error and lack of awareness. For example, falls from heights account for roughly 30% of fatal accidents in the construction industry, prompting calls for stronger safety measures.

Current safety management faces several challenges. Much depends on the experience and intuition of veteran workers, making hazard identification subjective; paper drawings and verbal briefings make it difficult to convey accurate information to everyone; and there are few opportunities for realistic hazard simulations, so safety awareness does not sufficiently increase. As projects become more complex and larger-scale, more efficient and effective safety management methods are required.

How AR advances safety management and enables hazard prediction

To address these challenges, the use of AR technology is making significant advances in on-site safety management. AR can “visualize invisible hazards,” allowing risks to be detected and shared in advance, which dramatically elevates the level of hazard prediction (KYT). What specific advantages does AR bring to safety management? Here are the main points.

• Visualization of hazardous areas: With AR, you can intuitively indicate where hazards are on site. For example, you can highlight in red the locations with a risk of falling from height through a device, or show the operating range of heavy machinery and no-entry zones with translucent CG. Because workers can check hazardous areas overlaid on the actual scene, they are more likely to notice risks that paper drawings alone might overlook.

• Enhanced safety education and training: AR is also powerful for safety education. Recreating past accidents or near-miss incidents as CG animations and overlaying them on the actual site allows workers to experience hazards with a high sense of realism. Unlike VR (virtual reality), which confines training to a virtual environment, AR enables learning while looking around the real environment, leading to more practical improvement in hazard sensitivity.

• Work procedure navigation: AR devices can provide step-by-step guidance of safety procedures during work. For instance, AR can highlight the bolt to be tightened next during assembly, or display checklist items to verify in sequence during inspections. Even when both hands are occupied, smart-glass-type AR can display information in the field of view, helping prevent missed safety checks.

• Information sharing and human error prevention: AR facilitates smooth on-site information sharing and helps reduce human error. Tacit knowledge and caution points held by experienced workers can be left and shared on site via AR markers, and remote experts can draw instructions directly onto live site footage. With everyone sharing the same visualized information, recognition gaps that cause mistakes are reduced, raising the team’s overall safety awareness.

• Emergency support: AR can also be used for evacuation guidance if an accident or disaster occurs. A worker’s view can show the nearest evacuation exits, fire extinguishers, and AEDs with arrows or icons, or display appropriate evacuation routes in real time. Even in high-stress emergencies prone to panic, visual instructions enable quick and safe responses.

By using AR in these ways, it becomes easier to detect previously overlooked hazards in advance, and safety training becomes more effective. There are reports that the number of near-miss incidents decreased after AR implementation, and AR is expected to be an effective tool toward achieving zero accidents.

Case studies of safety management using AR

Now let’s look at actual examples where AR has been applied to safety management in civil engineering sites. In recent years, various AR initiatives have been reported, mainly by major general contractors.

The first example is AR-driven surveying efficiency. At one site, AR surveying using a smartphone and a dedicated app made it possible for anyone to easily measure the volumes of embankments or excavated soil. Tasks that used to require multiple people and time-consuming, hazardous procedures could be performed by a single person from a safe location in a short time, greatly contributing to reduced workload and improved safety.

A second example is using AR for construction management. Systems have been put into practical use that overlay BIM data (3D design information of buildings and infrastructure) onto tablet camera footage so that structures and piping under construction can be visually inspected in situ. This allows the positions of pipes and cables hidden above ceilings or underground to be understood through AR, preventing accidental damage and helping secure workspace for subsequent operations to plan safe workflows. Also, because necessary information can be checked on site without spreading out drawings, waiting time during work is reduced, resulting in a balance of safety and efficiency.

A third example is AR for consensus building and quality confirmation. In one road widening project, AR glasses were linked with an automatic-tracking surveying instrument to overlay the design model at full scale across a wide site. The error was kept to only a few millimeters, and structures hidden behind walls were accurately reproduced in AR. As a result, explanations of the completed image to local residents became intuitive, significantly shortening the time needed for consensus building. In addition, design-change consultations that used to be time-consuming were conducted more quickly by sharing the on-site situation with all stakeholders via AR, contributing to faster decision-making and improved operational efficiency.

Furthermore, AR for safety education has also started on sites. For example, AR content has been released in which pointing a smartphone at a marker on a temporary fence wall makes the construction site beyond the wall appear translucent on the screen, allowing young workers and visitors to safely experience the construction. In another case, workers at an actual tunnel construction site used tablets to display temporary scaffolding and heavy equipment movements in AR during morning meetings for safety checks. These examples show how AR, combined with on-site creativity, is improving the quality of safety management.

AR’s prospects toward zero accidents

With the development of AR technology, safety management in the civil engineering and construction industry is expected to evolve further. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is also promoting the use of advanced technologies such as AR and VR through the DX (digitalization) initiative "i-Construction" (a policy aiming to revolutionize productivity and improve safety through ICT). In the future, integrating AR with other technologies could bring us step by step closer to zero accidents.

For example, combining AR with AI (artificial intelligence) could create systems that detect and warn in real time about dangerous behaviors or situations from on-site footage. If an AI trained on past accident data judges a situation to be dangerous, it could immediately display alerts through AR goggles. Linking AR with data from IoT sensors collecting equipment information could allow AR to notify workers of temperature anomalies or vibration, preventing accidents caused by equipment failure. Furthermore, with widespread high-capacity, low-latency 5G communications, cloud-based AI analysis results could be fed back to on-site AR devices instantly, enabling more precise real-time safety management.

Looking further ahead, one can imagine a world where digital twins (virtual replicas of the site) are linked with AR to perform continuous safety monitoring without distinguishing between virtual and real. Analyzing each worker’s movements and their surroundings on a digital twin and issuing warnings to an individual’s AR device when danger approaches could enable sophisticated hazard prediction. If safety management platforms centered on AR are developed, the slogan "zero accidents" may become a reality sooner than we think.

Simplified surveying with LRTK: safe and efficient site measurement

Alongside safety management initiatives, technological innovations to improve the efficiency and safety of on-site work itself are progressing. One such innovation is the simplified surveying using our company’s LRTK. LRTK is a solution that combines a smartphone (iPhone) with a compact GNSS receiver to enable anyone to perform centimeter-class high-precision surveying (cm level accuracy (half-inch accuracy)). Surveying tasks that previously required specialized equipment and a team can now be completed by a single person with a single smartphone, greatly improving on-site productivity.

A key feature of LRTK is the combination of high-precision positioning and AR functionality. Survey data and coordinates from design drawings can be displayed directly over the site scenery in AR, allowing even less-experienced technicians to intuitively perform stakeout (setting points for pile-driving and similar tasks) and as-built verification. For example, by showing markers for pile-driving locations in AR or displaying a heat map color-coded to differences from design elevations, workers can perform measurement tasks efficiently and prevent mistakes.

Moreover, simplified surveying with LRTK brings safety benefits. Traditional surveying at heights or alongside high-traffic roads sometimes required workers to enter dangerous areas. With LRTK, target points can be measured from a safe distance, minimizing entry into hazardous zones. Because the work can be completed by one person, the risk associated with gathering personnel for long hours during nighttime or bad weather is also reduced. Now that the latest technology makes it possible to "measure quickly and accurately," balancing safety management and work efficiency is becoming a reality.

In the civil engineering world, digital technologies including AR are becoming indispensable for both safety management and construction. Through surveying solutions using LRTK and other offerings, we will continue to contribute to on-site safety and productivity improvements and strive to realize "zero accidents."

FAQ

• Q: What is AR civil engineering? A: AR civil engineering refers to the overall efforts to use AR (augmented reality) technology in the civil engineering and construction fields. Specifically, it is the technology of using smartphones, tablets, or AR glasses at construction sites to overlay design data and safety information onto the real view. Because information that cannot be seen on drawings can be visualized in the real space, it leads to improved efficiency in construction management and enhanced safety.

• Q: What safety effects can be achieved by using AR at construction sites? A: Incorporating AR into on-site safety management can visualize hazardous areas and provide appropriate navigation for work procedures, which is expected to reduce accidents due to human error. For example, AR can help identify high-risk areas for working at height in advance or display the operating ranges of heavy machinery to reduce the risk of contact accidents. Conducting training with AR materials that let workers simulate past accidents can raise each worker’s hazard awareness, leading to accident prevention.

• Q: Which is more effective for safety education, VR or AR? A: Both VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) are effective means for safety education. VR can recreate disaster experiences in a virtual space and has high immersion, making it suitable for simulating the severity of hazards. AR, on the other hand, has the advantage of training overlaid on the actual site environment. Because trainees can learn hazard points while checking their surroundings on site, AR is expected to more directly improve practical safety awareness. Ideally, VR and AR should be used according to the on-site situation.

• Q: What are the challenges when introducing AR on site? A: Challenges for AR introduction include provisioning the necessary devices and apps, improving the digital literacy of on-site staff, and conducting technical verification. Site-specific issues must be addressed, such as device screens being hard to see under bright outdoor sunlight and compatibility with helmet use. High-precision alignment may also require GNSS or marker installation, so a balance must be considered between implementation cost and operational burden. However, recently there are more easy-to-use AR apps that run on smartphones alone, making trial introductions feasible even on small sites.

• Q: What is simplified surveying with LRTK? A: Simplified surveying with LRTK refers to a new method that uses a dedicated compact GNSS receiver and an app on a smartphone to perform centimeter-precision surveying without specialized equipment. The LRTK system can display acquired point coordinates in AR in real time, enabling intuitive stakeout work and as-built verification. It is a technology that makes work once performed by surveyors with total stations accessible to anyone in an easy and safe manner, offering the major benefit of simultaneously improving efficiency and safety.

• Q: Can zero accidents be achieved by using AR? A: Zero accidents (zero occupational accidents) is an ideal goal, but achieving it requires comprehensive efforts beyond AR alone, such as fostering a safety culture and changing people’s awareness. That said, AR is certainly a powerful ally in approaching zero accidents because it dramatically improves hazard visualization and information sharing. There are sites that have updated their no-accident records by actively using AR and ICT. The important thing is to combine technology with traditional safety measures and continuously improve. In other words, AR can be said to be a major first step on the path to zero accidents.