Automatic imagery data analysis for diagnosing human factors in the outage of a nuclear plant

Abstract

Nuclear power plant (NPP) outages involve maintenance and repair activities of a large number of workers in limited workspaces, while having tight schedules and zero-tolerance for accidents. During an outage, thousands of workers will be working around the NPP. Extremely high outage costs and expensive delays in maintenance projects (around $1.5 million per day) require tight outage schedules (typically 20 days). In such packed workspaces, real-time human behavior monitoring is critical for ensuring safe collaboration among workers, minimal wastes of time and resources due to the lack of situational awareness, and timely project control. Current methods for detailed human behavior monitoring on construction sites rely on manual imagery data collection and analysis, which is tedious and error-prone. This paper presents a framework of automatic imagery data analysis that enables real-time detection and diagnosis of anomalous human behaviors during outages, through the integration of 4D construction simulation and object tracking algorithms.