“The State of Immersive Technology Application for Construction Safety Training”: A Systematic Literature Review

One of the main contributing factors to high fatality and injury rates is inadequate safety training. Safety training is typically delivered in a classroom or on-site. It has been criticised for lacking engagement between trainers and trainees and for insufficient opportunities to practice at actual construction sites. The application of immersive technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) in safety training seems promising for overcoming the limitations of conventional training approaches because such technologies can provide trainees with an interactive and engaging way to learn how to identify and prevent hazards as well as experience the impact of risks in virtual and risk-free environments. Against this backdrop, researchers have attempted to develop various immersive technology-enabled training systems or approaches to enhance training effectiveness. However, there needs to be a more systematic review of what and how immersive technologies have been used to enhance safety training in the construction industry. To narrow this knowledge gap, the results of 95 papers that led to this paper aim to systematically assess the state of immersive technologies as applied in construction industry safety training by conducting a systematic literature review. The study was guided by the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) method. The study found that Unity 3D, Head Mounted Display (HMD), and Computer-Aided Virtual Environment (CAVE) are the most widely used immersive technologies in safety training. In addition, most of the studies were published between 2020 and 2021 and are from the United States, China, and South Korea.