Abstract:

Roadworks are essential to carry out a proper maintenance of roads and highways. These activities affect the free movement of road traffic. Therefore, the simultaneity between circulation and roadwork involves a very important danger, both for the users who circulate on the road, and for the workers who carry out these activities. For these workers, exposure to danger occurs both in the preliminary phase of temporary signposting, during the execution of the activity itself and in the final phase of removing the signposting, so that traffic returns to its normal state.
If the construction industry is where most fatal accidents happen, in roadworks the accident rate may be even higher due to frequent run-overs.

The partnership of the European project “VRoad: Virtual Reality applied to roadwork training in European construction industry” is composed by entities experts in Vocational and Education Training (VET) and the development and application of ICT tools to training. The consortium is formed by five partners from Spain, France, Italy and Portugal, coordinated by Fundación Laboral de la Construcción, which consider that Virtual Reality (VR) applied to training in European roadworks is an excellent tool to acquire Health and Safety (H&S) skills under no dangerous conditions.
The main aims of this project are:
*To define a theoretical and practical learning framework to develop a training system to fulfil pedagogical and H&S goals.
*To tackle specific needs for work-based training and hazard prevention in roadwork training developing a training system based on VR.
*To propose an innovative educational approach to roadworks’ practical learning through VR focused on lane closure, guardrail and traffic signs reparation, and protocol in case of accident.
*To ensure the full exploitation and accompaniment for Vocational Education and Training (VET) trainers and trainees in the use of the training system.
*To design a roadmap to establish the standards and necessary steps to facilitate the recognition of the training system developed under the European Qualification Framework (EQF) terms, also according to the European Quality Assurance Reference Framework (EQAVET) recommendations.

Further information on the project website: http://microsites.fundacionlaboral.org/vroad

Keywords:

Health and Safety, Virtual Reality, Roadwork, Training, Construction.