Student Research Spotlight
Jiannan Cai
Department:Civil Engineering
Advisor:Dr. Hubo Cai
Research Title:A Data-Driven Approach to Enhancing Holistic Situational Awareness for Construction Site Safety Management
Research Description:
My research focuses on developing automatic approaches to enhance holistic situational awareness (SA) of the dynamic construction environment in order to proactively preventing struck-by accidents on construction jobsite. The construction industry is the most dangerous industry in US. With only 5% of the US workforce, it accounts for over 20% of the total worker fatalities. A critical factor contributing to the accidents is the lack of holistic situational awareness due to the complex and dynamic nature of the construction environment. I am trying to couple multi-modal sensing, advanced data analytics, and artificial intelligence to enhance the holistic SA of construction workers, including better perception of real-time states on construction site, better understanding of jobsite context, and better prediction of future states. Moreover, with the increasing application of automation and robotics in construction industry, I believe the holistic SA of construction site obtained from this research will facilitate the human-robot harmonious collaboration in the future construction industry.
Why CIGP?
As my research area is related to construction automation and robotics, it is very interdisciplinary and challenging. I believe by joining the CS&E program, I can learn more about mathematics, computing, and other advanced techniques, which will benefit my own research. I am also looking forward to getting inspired by new ideas from a variety of disciplines and research community.
Awards:
- Andrews Fellowship, Purdue University, 2016
Presentations:
- Presenation in Construction Research Congress 2018
- Poster in Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2018
Leadership:
- Treasurer of Civil Engineering Graduate Student Advisory Council (CEGSAC), Purdue
- Secretary of North American Society for Trenchless Technology (NASTT) Purdue Chapter
