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Robotics and automation are successful in construction, health and safety, but costs and expertise hinder their use in developing nations. This study examined mobile apps as a more accessible and affordable alternative.

This descriptive study explored the use of mobile apps in construction, health and safety management. It used a literature review to identify their availability, accessibility, and capabilities. The study consisted of four five stages: searching for relevant apps, selecting them based on versatility, examining their specific functions, removing untested apps and discussing their functions based on empirical studies.

A comprehensive literature review identified 35 mobile apps that are relevant to health and safety management during construction. After rigorous analysis, eight apps were selected for further study based on their relevance, user friendliness and compliance with safety standards. These apps collectively serve 28 distinct functions, including first-aid training and administration, safety compliance and danger awareness, safety education and training, hazard detection and warnings.

This study suggests that mobile apps can provide a cost-effective and readily accessible alternative to robotics and automation in health and safety management in construction. Further research is needed to accurately assess the efficacy of these apps in real-world conditions.

This study explored the use of apps in health and safety management, highlighting their diverse capabilities and providing a framework for project managers, contractors and safety officers to select suitable apps.

In recent years, there has been significant interest in adopting XR (extended reality) technologies such as VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), particularly in retail. However, extending activities through reality-mediation is still mostly believed to offer an inferior experience due to their shortcomings in usability, wearability, graphical fidelity, etc. This study aims to address the research gap by experimentally examining the acceptance of metaverse shopping.

This study conducts a 2 (VR: with vs. without) × 2 (AR: with vs. without) between-subjects laboratory experiment involving 157 participants in simulated daily shopping environments. This study builds a physical brick-and-mortar store at the campus and stocked it with approximately 600 products with accompanying product information and pricing. The XR devices and a 3D laser scanner were used in constructing the three XR shopping conditions.

Results indicate that XR can offer an experience comparable to, or even surpassing, traditional shopping in terms of its instrumental and hedonic aspects, regardless of a slightly reduced perception of usability. AR negatively affected perceived ease of use, while VR significantly increased perceived enjoyment. It is surprising that the lower perceived ease of use appeared to be disconnected from the attitude toward metaverse shopping.

This study provides important experimental evidence on the acceptance of XR shopping, and the finding that low perceived ease of use may not always be detrimental adds to the theory of technology adoption as a whole. Additionally, it provides an important reference point for future randomized controlled studies exploring the effects of technology on adoption.

Metaverse, that is extended reality (XR)-based technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), are increasingly believed to facilitate fundamental human practice in the future. One of the vanguards of this development has been the consumption domain, where the multi-modal and multi-sensory technology-mediated immersion is expected to enrich consumers' experience. However, it remains unclear whether these expectations have been warranted in reality and whether, rather than enhancing the experience, metaverse technologies inhibit the functioning and experience, such as cognitive functioning and experience.

This study utilizes a 2 (VR: yes vs no) × 2 (AR: yes vs no) between-subjects laboratory experiment. A total of 159 student participants are randomly assigned to one condition — a brick-and-mortar store, a VR store, an AR store and an augmented virtuality (AV) store — to complete a typical shopping task. Four spatial attention indicators — visit shift, duration shift, visit variation and duration variation — are compared based on attention allocation data converted from head movements extracted from recorded videos during the experiments.

This study identifies three essential effects of XR technologies on consumers' spatial attention allocation: the inattention effect, acceleration effect and imbalance effect. Specifically, the inattention effect (the attentional visit shift from showcased products to the environmental periphery) appears when VR or AR technology is applied to virtualize the store and disappears when AR and VR are used together. The acceleration effect (the attentional duration shift from showcased products to the environmental periphery) exists in the VR store. Additionally, AR causes an imbalance effect (the attentional duration variation increases horizontally among the showcased products).

This study provides valuable empirical evidence of how VR and AR influence consumers' spatial bias in attention allocation, filling the research gap on cognitive function in the metaverse. This study also provides practical guidelines for retailers and XR designers and developers.

The reemergence of immersive virtual technology (IVR) provides both opportunities and challenges for workplace learning (WPL). The purpose of this study is to explore and develop knowledge about how gamification influences the WPL experience by addressing two research questions: RQ1. What characterizes a gamified immersive safety training experience with IVR technology? and RQ2. How does gamified immersive safety training with IVR technology impact the WPL experience?

The study adopted a mixed methods approach by combining a systematic literature review with a case study on an empirical project about immersive fire safety training for train operators that are used at the Swedish train operating company SJ. The case study included data from semistructured interviews, Web survey and observation studies. The data was analyzed in two stages combining inductive and deductive data analysis for identifying themes and categories.

The findings of the study are twofold: (1) themes that conceptualize the gamified immersive safety training experience based on outputs from both the literature review and the first round of data analysis; and (2) a framework with three overarching categories that are mapped with the identified themes, and which were deduced throughout the second round of data analysis.

The originality of the findings stresses the implications of how a body of knowledge that synthesizes gamification concepts with immersive safety training, can inform the design of WPL experiences that are facilitated with IVR technology. As such, the implications of the findings are targeted toward both the advancement of the IVR discourse in the WPL field, but also toward practical considerations for design of immersive learning experiences that enrich WPL practices and culture.

The sustainability of the construction industry is associated with the productivity, profitability and competitiveness of the firms, which are significantly affected by inefficient site supervision and labour management approaches. This study aims to use a case study with mixed methods to evaluate the site supervisory characteristics in labour management, labour performance assessment and labour productivity measurement towards developing meaningful guidelines in polishing construction supervision attributes.

Well-developed modern apprenticeship elements were applied to 62 construction supervisors who were selected using the snowball sampling method, and their relevant competency characteristics were assessed using a comprehensively developed grading mechanism connected with useful training manuals/tools. Academic reviews, experts’ consultations and other meticulous mixed approaches were applied at different stages of the research plan’s sequential layout.

The mean performance scores of supervisors indicate proficient-level grades in the competency characteristics related to applying efficient labour management procedures and developing-level grades in designing productivity measurement tools, performing assessments on efficiency and productivity and proposing enhancement practices on efficiency and productivity for site operations. The findings point to a modern generalised guideline that establishes the ranges of supervisory attributes within the scope of the study. The validity, reliability, adaptability and generalisability of the findings were assured by using pertinent statistical tests and professional assessments.

Though the study’s conclusions/findings are primarily applicable to the construction environment of a developing country comparable to the Sri Lankan context, they will considerably impact current/future industrial practices in various other countries and emerging industries.

The research has produced a conceptualised modern tool that guides determining the capacity levels of supervisory attributes for carrying out labour management, labour performance assessment and labour productivity measurement aspects in construction. The research has opened a pump that inflows new values of highly workable supervision features for strengthening the site management structures and filling the industry’s knowledge vacuum in the methodical execution of apprenticeships.

The safety of high-speed rail operation environments is an important guarantee for the safe operation of high-speed rail. The operating environment of the high-speed rail is complex, and the main factors affecting the safety of high-speed rail operating environment include meteorological disasters, perimeter intrusion and external environmental hazards. The purpose of the paper is to elaborate on the current research status and team research progress on the perception of safety situation in high-speed rail operation environment and to propose directions for further research in the future.

In terms of the mechanism and spatio-temporal evolution law of the main influencing factors on the safety of high-speed rail operation environments, the research status is elaborated, and the latest research progress and achievements of the team are introduced. This paper elaborates on the research status and introduces the latest research progress and achievements of the team in terms of meteorological, perimeter and external environmental situation perception methods for high-speed rail operation.

Based on the technical route of “situational awareness evaluation warning active control,” a technical system for monitoring the safety of high-speed train operation environments has been formed. Relevant theoretical and technical research and application have been carried out around the impact of meteorological disasters, perimeter intrusion and the external environment on high-speed rail safety. These works strongly support the improvement of China’s railway environmental safety guarantee technology.

With the operation of CR450 high-speed trains with a speed of 400 km per hour and the application of high-speed train autonomous driving technology in the future, new and higher requirements have been put forward for the safety of high-speed rail operation environments. The following five aspects of work are urgently needed: (1) Research the single factor disaster mechanism of wind, rain, snow, lightning, etc. for high-speed railways with a speed of 400 kms per hour, and based on this, study the evolution characteristics of multiple safety factors and the correlation between the high-speed driving safety environment, revealing the coupling disaster mechanism of multiple influencing factors; (2) Research covers multi-source data fusion methods and associated features such as disaster monitoring data, meteorological information, route characteristics and terrain and landforms, studying the spatio-temporal evolution laws of meteorological disasters, perimeter intrusions and external environmental hazards; (3) In terms of meteorological disaster situation awareness, research high-precision prediction methods for meteorological information time series along high-speed rail lines and study the realization of small-scale real-time dynamic and accurate prediction of meteorological disasters along high-speed rail lines; (4) In terms of perimeter intrusion, research a multi-modal fusion perception method for typical scenarios of high-speed rail operation in all time, all weather and all coverage and combine artificial intelligence technology to achieve comprehensive and accurate perception of perimeter security risks along the high-speed rail line and (5) In terms of external environment, based on the existing general network framework for change detection, we will carry out research on change detection and algorithms in the surrounding environment of high-speed rail.

Climate hazards in the form of cyclones are projected to become more intense under the pressures of future climate change. These changes represent a growing hazard to low lying coastal cities like Beira, Mozambique. In 2019, Beira experienced the devastating impact of Cyclone Idai. One of the many impacts resulting from this Cyclone was disrupted drinking water access. This investigation explores the distribution of Cyclone Idai’s impact on drinking water access via an environmental justice lens, exploring how preexisting water access characteristics may have predisposed households to the impacts of Cyclone Idai in Beria.

Relying on household survey data collected in Beira, the investigation applied a decision tree algorithm to investigate how drinking water disruption was distributed across the household survey sample using these preexisting vulnerabilities.

The investigation found that households that mainly relied upon piped water sources and experienced inconsistent access to water in the year prior to Cyclone Idai were more likely to experience disrupted drinking water access immediately after Cyclone Idai. The results indicate that residents in formal areas of Beira, largely reliant upon piped water supply, experienced higher rates of disrupted drinking water access following Cyclone Idai.

These findings question a commonly held assumption that informal areas are more vulnerable to climate hazards, like cyclones, than formal areas of a city. The findings support the inclusion of informal settlements in the design of climate change adaptation strategies.

This study aims to develop a reliable and valid German/Deutsch version of the management standards indicator tool (MSIT-D) to broaden the pool of instruments available to practitioners and to support international collaborations regarding this workplace management issue.

The MSIT-D was translated from English to German, then its psychometric properties examined using data from British employees (n = 321) and German employees (n = 358). Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were used to evaluate the internal structure and measurement invariance, and Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess internal consistency. Comparisons were made with the German language risk assessment tool Fragebogen zur Gefährdungsbeurteilung psychischer Belastungen (FGBU) to examine concurrent and incremental validity. Criterion validity was checked using established measures of work-related health.

The MSIT-D has an equivalent seven-factor structure (demands, control, managerial support, peer support, relationships, role and change) as the original; the analyses confirmed configural and metric measurement invariance with the original scale. The internal consistency of the scales ranged from 0.82 to 0.91. Regarding criterion validity, the MSIT-D was positively correlated with emotional exhaustion and psychosomatic complaints and negatively correlated with work engagement and workability. The analyses yielded meaningful correlations between the MSIT-D dimensions and the FGBU.

This is the first study to develop a German version of the MSIT and confirm metric measurement invariance. This will allow a comparison of MSIT scores with related constructs between German- and English-speaking samples. As a reliable and valid instrument for assessing work-related stressors, the outcome of this study presents opportunities for developing a unified surveillance system for work-related stress at the European level.

This paper contributes to discourse about complex disasters by applying cultural lenses to the study of coastal infrastructure (such as seawalls and dikes), thus departing from studies that focus on characterising, assessing, and predicting the physical resilience of hard structural forms that dominate knowledge about coastal infrastructure.

This ethnographic study nuances Philippine coastal infrastructure through examining the material registers of a seawall bordering an island inhabited by artisanal fisherfolk. By “material registers”, this research refers to the socially informed ways of regarding and constructing material configurations and how the latter are enacted and resisted. Data collection was accomplished through focus groups with community leaders, on-site and remote interviews with homeowners, and archival research to further understand the spatial and policy context of the structure.

The discussion focuses on the seawall’s three material registers (protection, fragility, and misrecognition) and reveals how infrastructure built for an island community of fisherfolk simultaneously fulfils, fails, and complicates the promise of disaster resilience.

This research demonstrates the potential of “material registers”, a term previously used to analyse architecture and housing, to understand the technopolitics of infrastructure and how materially informed tensions between homeowners' and state notions of infrastructure contribute to protracted experiences of disaster and coastal maladaptation.

This research signposts the need for disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, and sustainable development policies that legitimize the construction of infrastructure to recognize the latter's relationship and impact on multiple sphere of coastal life, including housing and citizenship implications.

This research highlights how infrastructure for coastal disaster risk management implicates geographically informed power relations within a community fisherfolk and between their “small” island community and more politically and economically dominant groups.

Whereas studies of coastal infrastructure are focused on quantitative and predictive research regarding hard structural forms in megacities, this study apprehends disaster complexity through examining the cultural and contested nature of infrastructure for coastal flood management in an island community of fisherfolk.

Disaster risk reduction is of prime importance in informal settlements in the Global South, where several forms of vulnerability coexist. Policy and official programmes, however, rarely respond to the needs and expectations of citizens and local leaders living in these settlements. Even though these agents constantly attempt to reduce risks in their own way, we know very little about their activities, motivations and effective impact on risk reduction. Here we seek to conceptualize bottom-up initiatives to better grasp their origins, limitations and success.

Through a four-year action-research project in Colombia, Cuba and Chile, we theorize about the production of change by local agents. Through detailed case studies we explored the activism of 17 local leaders. Through narrative analysis we studied their motivations and explanations. Finally, by documenting 22 initiatives, we revealed effective changes in space.

In the face of risk and disasters, residents and leaders in informal settings engaged in symbolic, physical and social spaces of interaction. Their actions were guided by trust, emotions, time cycles and activism. Local agency was justified by narratives about risk and climate change that differ from those of authorities and scholars.

There is still limited understanding of bottom-up initiatives in informal settings. It is crucial to conceptualize their origins, limitations and success. The focus on three specific countries necessitates further research for broader applicability and understanding.

A better comprehension of bottom-up actions is crucial for informing policies and programmes aimed at reducing risk in informal settings. Stakeholders must recognize the political, social and cultural roles of these actions for more impactful climate action.

We borrow Simon’s concept of “artefact” to introduce the notion of “Artefacts of Disaster Risk Reduction”, providing insights into the multifaceted nature of bottom-up initiatives. We also emphasize the simultaneous political and phenomenological character of these actions, contributing to a deeper understanding of their origins and impact.