Anthropometric Measurement and Comparative Analysis of Ethiopian Army Personnel Across Age, Ethnicity, and Nationality

Abstract

The anthropometric characteristics of the users depend upon the topography, nutrition, age, ethnicity, gender, and living conditions, and play a crucial role in the design of the equipment and the workspace to be used by them. This study aims to establish an anthropometry database for male Ethiopian army personnel and investigate the anthropometric variability across ethnicity, age, and with other countries, with the intention to facilitate ergonomic design and development of various facilities (e.g., equipment/ devices, and workspaces) for the Ethiopian army. Following the reliability assessment of the physical measurement technique, the anthropometric data from 250 Ethiopian male army personnel (four different ethnic groups at different age levels) were collected, and normality of the data set was tested. The anthropometric database of Ethiopian army personnel in terms of range, mean, standard deviation, percentile values (5th, 50th, and 95th) was documented. PCA was applied to select a smaller representative by reducing a larger set of variables for further statistical analysis and applications. ANOVA and follow-up posthoc test (Tukey’s HSD test) were carried out to compare anthropometric differences among different age groups and ethnic variations. The mean anthropometric differences were also compared with databases from other countries (India, Korea, and USA) using t-test. Significant variations were found when the anthropometry was compared between age, ethnicity, and cross-nationals. The findings indicate that variations in age, ethnicity, and geographical factors could have a significant impact on the ergonomic design of equipment and workspaces of Ethiopian army personnel.

Understanding the synthesis of anthropometric diversity and workspace dimensions in ergonomic design of light armored vehicle

“…Fixed‐eye‐point design is quite important for the sighting and control units (Hogberg, 2009; Vogt et al, 2005). Overall, the sighting system and controlling units should be compatible with the anthropometric range of specified users (5th to 95th p) (Wibneh et al, 2020).…”

“…Overall, the effective design of vehicular workspaces should consider user anthropometry and ROMs (Hsiao, 2013). Since the anthropometry of the Ethiopian army varies significantly across geographic and ethnic affiliation (Wibneh et al, 2020), it has an ergonomic impact on the design of LAV workspaces. If the workspace cannot accommodate the overall army population, it can adversely affect the health and performance of soldiers (McDonald et al, 2016).…”

“…Primarily, to propose suitable vehicle workspace design dimensions (in terms of body dimensions and ROM), combinational equations requiring the minimum and maximum (design) limits of static anthropometric data were formulated. The results of the static anthropometric survey of Ethiopian soldiers conducted in a prior survey was used in this study (Wibneh et al, 2020). Since the recommended ROM and vision angles have strong literature support, globally accepted ROM measurements were adopted because of their limited use in our study.…”

“…We used the anthropometric dimensions (Figure 2 and Table 1) of Ethiopian armed personnel (250 males and 60 females) developed by Wibneh et al (2020) in our study. ISO 7250‐1:2017 standard (ISO, 2017) was used for adopting basic human body measurements for technological design.…”

Effect of Hull Obliquity on Crew Protection, Mass and Space Occupancy of Light Armoured Vehicle

“…In a prior study, anthropometric dimensions of 310 Ethiopian armed personnel (250 males and 60 females) 25 were physically measured. Later, they used those anthropometric dimensions to predict the relevant vehicular workspace 26 .…”