Evaluating human body’s 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 negative films 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 an experimental procedure. This procedure is 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 results of this procedure and their comparison with data taken from other literature on the subject.