Opportunities for meeting sustainability objectives

Abstract

It is inevitable that theory and good practice in Human Factors/Ergonomics (HF/E) should comprise engineering for sustainability to safeguard ecology and maintaining the quality of life. There are immediate and longer-term opportunities for HF/E community to be a key contributor in solving sustainability issues. However, sustainability research in HF/E domain has only been partially explored. A further theoretical and practical contribution is needed. Digital Human Modeling (DHM) is a potential method to integrate human element into sustainability research. However, current DHM tools are limited in resolving these issues until sustainability objectives are explicitly considered. There are DHM tools available to evaluate human performance. However typically do not consider sustainability aspects of the work environment. This study introduces two conceptual digital ergonomics toolkits, Air Quality Index Assessment and Metabolic Energy Expenditure, to demonstrate the potential use of DHM in evaluating the health risks and worker's performance in work design. Incorporating human element into sustainability through DHM (digital ergonomics toolkits) reduces the need for in-situ human data collection and physical prototyping for work environments that are subject to poor air quality, toxic exposure and handling of hazardous materials. The DHM toolkits proposed in this study can bring attention towards building multidisciplinary collaboration that can enhance HF/E outreach goals in sustainability-related engineering design. Relevance to IndustryDHM can help industry to minimize the need of in-situ human data collection, reduce the need of physical prototyping, and optimize overall system performance for where subjects are exposed to poor air quality, toxic exposure, and handling of hazardous materials.