A holistic evaluation of ergonomics application in health, safety, and environment management research for construction workers.

• Ergonomics application in HSE management research for construction workers were evaluated. • Influential journals, scholars, and articles in applying ergonomics to enhance HSE were identified. • Research status and trends were analyzed by keyword co-occurrence, burst detection, and cluster analysis. • Five research themes and their relationships were qualitatively discussed. • A conceptual framework was proposed by linking research areas into future research directions. T he construction industry is one of the industries with worst safety records. With the increasing application of ergonomics, health, safety, and environment (HSE) management of construction workers has been improved. However, a thorough evaluation of ergonomics application in HSE management research for construction workers remains unavailable. This study aims to fill this gap by evaluating relevant peer-reviewed journal papers published from 2000 to 2021 to ascertain the status of this research area and identify future directions. After a literature search in Scopus and Web of Science and careful manual screening, a total of 252 articles were identified. The papers were analyzed in terms of contributing journals, prominent scholars, and critical articles as well as keyword co-occurrence, burst detection, and term clustering. A conceptual framework linking five research themes (ergonomic interventions, ergonomic training, ergonomic risk factors identification and evaluation, ergonomic posture recognition, and physiological monitoring) into corresponding future research directions was proposed based on a qualitative evaluation. The findings of this study provide useful references for future application of ergonomics in the enhanced HSE management of construction workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]