Balancing privacy and occupational safety and health in construction: A blockchain-enabled P-OSH deployment framework
Introduction
Occupational safety and health (OSH), also known as occupational health and safety (OHS) or workplace health and safety (WHS), concerns the physical, mental, and social well-being of workers in all occupations (Archer et al., 2017). Globally, more than 2.78 million people die and 374 million suffer from non-fatal injuries each year from workplace-related accidents or diseases (ILO, 2021). The occupational fatality rate of the construction industry is five times higher than that of the manufacturing industry (Sawacha et al., 1999), making it one of the most hazardous industries (Pinto et al., 2011). For centuries, efforts have been made from institutional, managerial, cultural, and technological perspectives to reduce construction accidents (Tam et al., 2004). Niu et al. (2019) summarized these efforts into three waves, the first relying on ‘hard’ protection using personal protective equipment (PPE), the second emphasizing ‘soft’ safety training and education, and the third exploiting advanced smart technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), big data analytics, and robotics. Examples of smart technology applications include computer vision (CV) (Fang et al., 2020), building information modelling (BIM) and IoT integration (Asadzadeh et al., 2020, Niu et al., 2019), mobile computing (Zhang et al., 2017a), wearable technologies (Awolusi et al., 2018), and virtual/augmented reality (Li et al., 2018, Shi et al., 2019). However, in the rush to exploit advanced smart technologies to enhance construction OSH, privacy is often sacrificed, making such solutions a ‘pyrrhic triumph’ (Nnaji & Karakhan, 2020).
The private information of a person can include identities such as name and/or staff number (Park & Kim, 2013), facial features or eye movement (Medapati et al., 2020), body posture (Han & Lee, 2013), real-time location (Fang et al., 2020), travel history (Ioannou et al., 2020), or even tastes and preferences (Cohen, 2012). Privacy protection matters because it is a major component of social norms and laws (McCreary, 2008). However, it is often traded away for ‘good causes’ such as security, safety, efficiency, or productivity. Surveillance has expanded in the workplace and beyond, from the watchfulness of Taylor’s scientific management to the ‘omnipticon’ where the many watch the many (Sprague, 2007). In the COVID-19 era, creeping surveillance and vaccine passports, for example, have been disputed or even bitterly resisted as infringements of privacy despite being instituted for public health and safety reasons. Privacy issues related to technologies has been recently brought out. Ahn et al. (2019) noted the privacy risks of wearable sensing technology applications, while Nnaji and Karakhan (2020) identified unguaranteed privacy as a key limitation of advanced technologies. In the workplace, the use of ethical technologies together with regulations to protect privacy while pursuing OSH is high on the agenda. It is against this backdrop that blockchain technology is gaining attention.
Literally, blockchain is a set of blocks chained in a network of participants. It is a decentralized, encrypted, and distributed peer-to-peer digital ledger comprising an ordered set of connected and replicated blocks of data for verifiable, immutable, and incorruptible transaction recording (Hughes et al., 2019, Karamchandani et al., 2020). Its core characteristics are immutability, decentralization, and traceability enabled by the use of a distributed peer-to-peer digital ledger, secured cryptographic algorithms, and a consensus mechanism (Hughes et al., 2019, Xue and Lu, 2020). The technology has shown great promise in privacy protection because of the distributed ledger, cryptography, and consensus mechanism. For example, Zhang and Lin (2018) apply blockchain to cloud-based electronic health-record sharing to preserve patients’ privacy, Gai et al. (2019) to smart grid energy trading to preserve user’s privacy, and Zhang et al. (2020) to smart meters in a smart home to protect residents’ privacy.
In the context of construction, Nawari and Ravindran (2019) pointed out that the implementation of blockchain could transform construction industry culture, enhance efficiencies, and drive future advancements. Perera et al. (2020) showed the prospects of blockchain in construction and property management. Other studies have reported empirical blockchain applications in construction, such as minimization of information redundancy for BIM and blockchain integration (Xue & Lu, 2020), smart construction objects as blockchain oracles (Lu et al., 2021a), integrated physical and financial supply chains (Hamledari & Fischer, 2021), modular construction supply chain (Li et al., 2022), and governmental supervision of construction work (Lu et al., 2021b). However, there is little research, if any, which has explored the use of blockchain technology to balance privacy protection while advancing smart construction excellence.
This paper aims to tackle the issue of balancing privacy protection and OSH management in construction by applying blockchain technology. It adopts the design science research as the overarching methodology. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 is to elaborate the methodology. Section 3 reviews the literature related to privacy and privacy infringement risks in OSH management and Section 4 reviews the blockchain basics and its affordances for privacy protection. Section 5 proposes the blockchain-enabled P-OSH system. A prototype of the system is developed in Section 6 and discussion and conclusions are made in 7 Discussion, 8 Conclusions, respectively.
Section snippets
Research methods
This research adopts the design science research (DSR) methodology (Peffers et al., 2007), under which literature review, industrial engagement, brainstorming, cross-sectoral learning, case study, prototyping, and experiments are organized in a systematic way. As shown in Fig. 1, the DSR methodology includes six research stages. The problem identification and motivation of developing a P-OSH deployment framework is from both the literature and our long engagement with the industry. Too often,
Privacy taxonomy
The term ‘privacy’ is subject to a disarray of meaning (Solove, 2006), and this has led to attempts to build privacy taxonomies (Table 1). Kasper’s (2005) taxonomy is based on types of privacy invasion, and Solove’s (2006) the stages of privacy infringement. Clarke’s (1997) is focused on types of privacy, expanded upon by Finn et al. (2013) who considered potential privacy issues presented by recent technological advances. Due to its comprehensiveness, this research adopts the taxonomy of Finn
Blockchain technology and three architecture types
Three main components support the functioning of a blockchain, namely cryptographic algorithms, consensus mechanisms, and distributed ledgers (Xue and Lu, 2020). These components, in particular the encryption and decentralization, provide opportunities for privacy preservation. For example, identification and biometric information of workers can be encrypted and stored in distributed ledgers so that no one, including the safety officer, can see the full information in plain text. Encryption is
The conceptual P-OSH framework
A conceptual framework of the privacy-protecting OSH (P-OSH) management system is proposed, as illustrated in Fig. 2. First, OSH data collected from workplaces using advanced technologies (e.g., laser scanning, sensor networks, or webcams) is processed and classified according to sensitivity level. Next, the OSH data is fed into advanced algorithms to enable OSH management, e.g., detecting hazardous area intrusion, or identifying heat stroke risks. Many algorithms of this kind can function
Prototype of the blockchain-enabled P-OSH deployment system
A prototype is developed to illustrate how the blockchain-enabled P-OSH deployment system can be applied and implemented in a real-life project. It is noticed that under the widespread pressure of improving OSH from the government and the public, many OSH management systems using smart technologies have been implemented on-site already. Project clients normally initiate, endorse, and support the OSH management systems while the main contractors take the responsibility to execute them with the
Discussion
This research makes several non-trivial contributions. Firstly, it proposes a novel information channeling mechanism that separates workers’ sensitive privacy information and less-sensitive information for OSH management. This mechanism minimizes the risks of infringing workers’ privacy while maintaining the benefits of advanced OSH technologies. Secondly, on top of the information channeling mechanism, it proposes the separate storage of the sensitive and less sensitive privacy data on private
Conclusions
Construction materializes our living environment, boosts the economy, and provides employment and wages. However, it also has a notoriously poor OSH record. Various smart technologies (e.g., big data, smart sensing, AI, and robotics) are being exploited to improve this situation but too often function at the risk of infringing workers’ privacy. The balance between OSH management and privacy protection is looming as a grave concern in construction.
This research attempts to find a solution by
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Jinying Xu: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Weisheng Lu: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition. Liupengfei Wu: Writing – original draft, Visualization. Jinfeng Lou: Writing – review & editing. Xiao Li: Project administration.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
The work presented in this paper was financially supported by the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission (ITC) with the Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) (No. ITP/029/20LP). This funding source had no role in the design and conduction of this study.
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