Aizul Nahar Harun

Traditional vs Technological Based Surveillance on Construction Site: A Review

The negative impacts of construction activities can be controlled and reduced through identification of environmental aspects and impacts of construction activities, implementation of the mitigation measures and site monitoring on a regular basis e.g through surveillance in the framework of the Environmental Management System (EMS). Continuous improvement efforts towards traditional methods and increased needs for factual information and productivity in the environmental monitoring field have been met with latest innovations in mobile information and sensory technology options. This paper through literature aims to review the characteristic of both traditional and technology based surveillance while highlighting the on how those methods complement each other.

Supporting Environmental Surveillance on Construction Sites using Mobile Environmental Information System

Data and data retrieval remain central to the challenge of environmental protection initiatives. Approaches such as walk-through inspections and environmental monitoring rely on environmental information that is concise, accurate, material timely and usable. However, current methods of collecting environmental data from the field are, on occasion, problematic in that they are labour-intensive and can take a considerable time to process between the point of collection and the period of analysis. These drawbacks create an obstacle for construction managers and can result in unnecessary environmental impacts, prosecutions and delays. Technological based surveillance has become an alternative in an attempt to overcome some of these disadvantages. But, in some circumstances it can be difficult to demonstrate a connection between the pollution detected and a specific source solely using these methods. Therefore, while physical environmental surveillance (observation/walk-through inspection) still remains important some improvements can be made through the application of Internet of Things technologies in order to accommodate the needs of both physical and technological based environmental surveillance in one system. This paper proposes a prototype of the Mobile Environmental Information System. This system is designed to assist construction environmental management teams to efficiently perform surveillance activities and make informed decisions in the light of a better awareness of the current status of environmental constraints and legislation. The user requirements, the conceptual model and the functional specifications as well as the system architecture for the prototype system presented in this paper will form the basis for the development of the prototype system.

Implementation Barriers of MobileEnvironmental Information System forEnvironmental Surveillance on ConstructionSites

The use of Mobile Environmental Information System (MEIS) which integrates the use of mobile web, devices and wireless sensor networks has the potential to enhance environmental information management and communication processes among users and play an important role in field data acquisition and validation, to provide real-time environmental data monitoring and, more importantly, to provide warning signs in the areas of construction activities that require immediate corrective action. However, the understanding on the anticipated barriers for any proposed systems that may arise during the implementation of the system are important to ensure the sustainability of the systems in the long run. In this paper, this issue was addressed through the prototype demonstration and evaluation sessions where the respondents had the opportunity to highlight the implementation barriers while testing the functions of the ENSOCS web by using smartphones to perform the pre-defined tasks. As a result, the practitioners in Malaysia and the UK had highlighted that these barriers include return on investment, operational cost, legality issues, work procedures issues, technology and technical issues, technology adoption barriers and network infrastructure. Therefore, from this research, the developers of mobile applications would obtain valuable input with regards to understanding the requirements of construction environmental management teams as well as the limitation for the implementation of MEIS within the construction industry.