Measuring a nation
by Michèle Nardelli
In
their honours year, human movement students Tim Kupke and Nathan Daniell
had a student experience that would just about tick off every box in
what UniSA has defined in its Graduate Qualities.
In 2004 Kupke and Daniell became a pivotal part of one of the largest anthropometric data collection projects ever carried out in Australia and the following year they took the project on the road across the country.
The study, led by Associate Professor Tim Olds and undertaken for the Australian Defence Force (ADF), set out to get a measure of Australians aged between 18 and 30 years – and not just height and weight, but a complete 3-D picture, looking at all proportions.
The data will inform ADF recruitment, planning and air crew safety and is part of the Australian Defence Anthropometric Personnel Testing (ADAPT) project.
Visiting five capital cities and five military bases and scanning close to 2000 people, Daniell and Kupke said they worked long hours and faced some logistical crises along the way. But both believe it was one of the best experiences a student could have.
"Essentially we became the technical team leaders at all the testing sites," Daniell said.
"That meant setting up the equipment, recruiting subjects if numbers of volunteers were down, organising flights and transport, looking after and working with a team of other students and at the same time managing the integrity of all the data collection."
And according to Kupke, it also included a few high dramas.
"In Brisbane our $200,000 state-of-the-art scanner decided to have some technical hitches – it stopped working and we had to solve that problem on the spot," Kupke said. "I remember some late night phone calls to the German manufacturers and some anxious moments, but we got through."
With the project completed, Daniell and Kupke have taken different directions. Daniell has continued studying and is working on a PhD, which will "drill down" into some of the Australian data collected. He wants to research body volumes in the midsection, which may reveal critical values relating to abdominal fat and obesity as just one in a series of data analysis projects that will inform his thesis.
PhD study was also an option for Kupke who graduated with honours last year, but he has chosen to explore new directions and is working at UniSA on a casual basis while he makes some career decisions.
"Anthropometry has the capacity to inform so many different industries – clothing manufacture, ergonomics and design, architecture, computer game development – but I am not sure the data is used as well as it could be or that enough people know about the applications of this kind of research," he said.
"Whatever I do, the experience I had through this project at UniSA will hold me in good stead."
Daniell and Kupke recently set up shop at the Science Outside the Square event to mark the FIFA World Cup and the role of science in sport. More than 100 South Australians experienced the body scan technology first hand.