Developing a Smart Helmet Based on the Internet of Things to Manage Hearing Problems in the Construction Projects

Construction sites are renowned as the noisiest places that may cause hearing loss to workers. Lack of awareness about the level of harmful sounds causes more prevalence of hearing loss than other industries. This article intends to solve this issue by an innovative idea that is designing a wearable device called "smart helmet" (SH). The SH uses the concept of the Internet of things (IoT) for real-time monitoring workers' hearing health in construction sites. SH works online to send notifications in the presence of harmful sounds and offline due to storing data to analyse workers' health conditions. The results are divided into two sections: The first section presents the detail of the architecture, hardware and software of the SH and the second section offers a formula to convert noisy situations into allowable working time. By combining the proposed procedure and SH's prepared data, the allowable working time can be calculated for workers. The results of applying this device in practical projects show that steelworkers are more at risk than the others with exposure to 98 dB sounds.