Tower cranes are a common sight in the construction jobsites. These are amongst one of most important and expensive equipment used in construction sites. Tower cranes are especially common in Modular Integrated Construction (MiC) jobsites. Despite their great importance, tower cranes can tend to be extremely dangerous and fatal if adequate safety measures are not followed. Unsafe working practices can cause serious injuries, resulting in costly damages to men, materials and property. Thus, it is very essential to ensure safety during tower crane operations, especially tower crane lifting zone safety.
However, manual safety monitoring of tower crane operations is not efficient owing to the limitations existing in human monitoring. In contrast to this, using advanced technologies like AI, video analytics, and IoT devices makes it easier and efficient to monitor tower crane operations, anticipate and manage safety risk and thus ensure safer tower crane operations.
This blog thus attempts at showcasing how viAct makes use of video analytics for construction safety and helps boost safety during tower crane operations.
Why is Tower Crane Lifting Zone Safety Important?
Reports have shown that on an average there are around 1.5 tower crane accidents taking place every year. Further, if the tower crane accidents fatalities are divided according to the cause of death, 62% of accidents are due to contact with object/ equipment, 20% are due to falls, 10% related to transportation incidents and 8% due to contact with an electrical current. Although the tower crane related accidents are rare compared to other types of accidents, yet they can cause serious injury when they happen.
What are the Common Tower Crane Safety Hazards and their Causes?
The common tower-crane related safety hazards and their causes are as follows:
Falling Loads: Falling loads are one of the most common threats while working with overhead cranes. Such an event can cause serious injuries, fatalities and even death of men along with structural damage to the properties nearby. There are several causes that may lead to falling loads from the overhead cranes. Major ones include: operator’s distraction or mistake, slipping due to improper securing, mechanical failure, two blocking (that is, the situation when the lower load block touches the upper load block, increasing the tension on the line, leading to falling down of loads).
Overloading: Overloaded cranes are a hot bed for fatalities and injuries. Overloading can cause structural failure and/or damage to the tower cranes. Crane overloading does not only mean excess loading or exceeding the maximum load, but can also involve: dragging of loads, sudden dropping of loads, misplacing loads and using defective components.
Electrical Hazards: Most of the tower-crane related accidents are electrical hazards. These generally happens when the metallic components of the tall tower crane touches high-voltage power lines. The risk of electrical hazards during tower crane operations is even more when the lifting is carried out in close proximity to power lines.
Overturning: Tower crane overturn is another important safety hazard related to tower crane operations. Causes may include moving heavy loads in a high frequency, overloading and others.
How Can viAct Ensure Tower Crane Lifting Zone Safety?
viAct’s construction management software leverages the power of AI for workplace safety to offer a smart site safety system (SSSS) that can boost the safety performances in the jobsites. This smart site safety system offers a plethora of smart safety solutions, ranging from PPE detection and hazardous area access control to work at height safety monitoring to tower crane lifting zone safety, to name a few.
viAct’s AI-powered machinery/vehicle monitoring solution – viMAC leverages the power of AI video analytics to ensure tower crane lifting zone safety in the following manner:
Worker’s Lifting Zone Intrusion Detection: The dynamic AI monitoring system can detect any instance of worker entering into lifting zone. As soon as any such instance of danger zone intrusion is detected, instant and real-time alerts are generated by the danger zone alert system that enables the operator, worker as well as other stakeholders to get alert about the risky situation and thus take immediate steps to prevent fatalities from happening.
Object Free Fall Alert: The easy plug and play, mobile and portable AI monitoring system can immediately detect object or load falling down from the overhead crane. In addition to this, real-time alerts are generated by the dangerous situation alert system, notifying the stakeholders about the dangerous situation. Further, these captured insights are also recorded in the centralized management platform for construction that can be viewed anytime later and be used for worker’s training.
Tower Crane Operator’s Distraction Detection: Using video analytics for workplace safety, the construction safety software can detect instance of operator not paying attention or distraction while operating the tower crane and trigger light & sound alarms to alert the driver or operator and ensure safer tower crane operations.
Cargo Overweight Alert: In case the tower crane is loaded with excess weight or load, the dynamic AI monitoring system can automatically detect and alert it so that insightful actions can be undertaken to prevent incidents like tower crane overturn or falling down of loads and so on.
Worker-Object-Machine Collison Detection: The computer vision-powered cameras can detect any worker standing/working too close to operating tower crane or tower crane working too close to some property and trigger alerts to avoid instances of collision accidents.
Apart from the above mentioned, viAct’s smart AI monitoring solution is also capable of detecting any mechanical errors like break failures as well as instances like object near misses to ensure the holistic safety of tower crane operations.
Want to Ensure Safety in Tower Crane Operations?
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More Information:
How Can Safety Inspection Software for Manufacturing Industry Boost Safety in Manufacturing Units?
How Can Construction Fleet Management Software Promote Green Fleet Management?
How AI Video Analytics can Promote Modular Integrated Construction (MiC) Safety?