Evaluating human body area factors from digital images: A measurement tool for a better evaluation of the ergonomics of working places

The evaluation of comfort conditions of people in confined environments requires a knowledge of the human body’s radiation data. This is essentially represented by the projected area of the body in a given direction. From this factor, other important parameters can be computed, such as projected area factors and angle factors. Presently, these parameters are evaluated using graphs deriving from a pioneering field study carried out by P.O. Fanger for which a piece of apparatus using mirrors and weight operations on film negatives is used. Obviously, these graphs, apart from referring to a limited number of subjects, also involve some reading errors. With the aim of enlarging the number of experimental cases and in order to provide a simplified method of making measurements, this work proposes a new experimental procedure based on digital images of the human body which are processed using a computer-based system. The first part of the paper is dedicated to the description of this procedure and to some early comparison with data found in the literature on the subject. The second part concerns the introduction of a new method for computing the effective area of people, starting from the projected areas taken by means of the present apparatus.