International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423

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International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ergon

A quick identification model for assessing human anxiety and thermal

comfort based on physiological signals in a hot and humid
working environment
Yu Jiao *, Xiya Wang, Yutao Kang, Zhiqu Zhong, Weijiong Chen
College of Ocean Science and Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, 201306, PR China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: We propose a simple and quick method for quantifying workers’ anxiety and thermal comfort levels using
Occupational health physiological signals. Nine subjects enrolled in a series of controlled laboratory experiments involving varying
Occupational safety temperature, relative humidity, and labor intensities. A total of 40 experiments were conducted, and 1592 groups
Risk management
of anxiety data and 1624 groups of thermal comfort data were obtained, respectively. During 2-h-working trials,
Feature extraction
Wearable sensors
Electroencephalogram (EEG), photoplethysmography (PPG), and pupil diameter of each subject were collected
synchronously, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and thermal comfort vote (TCV) were completed in
stages. Random Forest was adopted to screen out the appropriate sensitivity feature indicators of anxiety levels
and thermal comfort levels from the 70 features of the 10 EEG channels. Finally, Random Forest, Gradient
Boosting Decision Tree, K-nearest Neighbor Algorithm, and Support Vector Machine were used to determine
relevant physiological data combinations and modeling algorithms. The Precision of the anxiety level and
thermal comfort level quick identification model based on Random Forest Algorithm can reach 81.04% and
84.79%, respectively. This suggests that the proposed quick identification method for assessing workers’ anxiety
and thermal comfort levels holds promise. Physiological data need to be obtained by monitoring only PPG, pupil
diameter, and 5 EEG channels. By processing these data, the workers’ anxiety and thermal comfort level could be
judged realistically to ensure their safety. It is suggested that PPG, pupil diameter, and EEG should be considered
all together in the future study of anxiety and thermal comfort.

1. Introduction anxiety of personnel in hot and humid environment.

Environmental temperature and humidity impact human subjective
perception and will cause change of psychological factors, which is
manifested as a certain degree change of subjective thermal comfort and
anxiety based on the environmental influence. Limited space operations
in shipyards and chemical plants, washing operations in ballast tanks of
ships, and mining operations (Maurya et al., 2015) in mining areas are
typical high temperature and high humidity operations. Thermal and
humidity environment would have negative effects on emotions and
psychology of workers(Bishop 2010), such as feeling anxious and un­
comfortable, which would lead to their decreased work efficiency, slow
response, and poor judgment to the emergency, and easy to cause ac­
cidents (Lan et al., 2011; Lan et al., 2011). Therefore, it is of great
practical significance to quantify and monitor thermal comfort and
Changes in emotions and cognition can be confirmed by objective
measures and have become an essential research topic in a variety of
domains, including medical psychology and computer science. In the
current study, objective measures are divided into two categories:
physical measurements and physiological measurements. Facial ex­
pressions (Ikeda 2020), blink modulation (Waters et al., 2005), and
Action capabilities (Harris and Wilmut 2020) are classified as physical
measurements. But its application is limited since the measurement of
physical indicators is prone to subjective control and easily hidden or
fake, resulting in a reduction in recognition accuracy. Physiological
measures included measurement of brain activity, heart rate(HR)
(Notterman et al., 1952), electrodermal activity (EDA) (Mirete et al.,
2021), and cortisol (Kawana et al., 2019). Because of the excellent
precision, promising applications, and high research value of

* Corresponding author. College of Ocean Science and Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, 1550 Haigang Avenue, Pudong District, Shanghai, 201306, PR
China.
E-mail address: yujiao@shmtu.edu.cn (Y. Jiao).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ergon.2023.103423
Received 12 April 2022; Received in revised form 17 January 2023; Accepted 22 January 2023
Available online 7 February 2023
0169-8141/© 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Y. Jiao et al.
physiological measurements, an increasing number of researchers are
devoting themselves to this topic.
Anxiety is defined as an emotional experience of discomfort associ­
ated with the expectation of problems or the foreboding evil (Chandola
et al., 2010), which may degrade concentration and make task perfor­
mance worse (Levin et al., 2007). EEG-based research on the emotions
recognition dates back to 1997 (Musha et al., 1997). Additionally, with
the rapid development and popularity of portable, low-cost wearable
devices (Gu et al., 2017), and dry electrode technology (Kawana et al.,
2019) in recent years, mental state detection based on EEG signals has
become possible (Baradits et al., 2020; Chen, Li1 et al., 2021) in prac­
tical situations. In the past few years, researchers focused on finding the
critical frequency bands or channels for EEG-based emotion and
cognition with different methods. Individuals with high anxiety levels
have greater energy values of the β band compared to normal in­
dividuals (Pavlenko et al., 2009). Anxiety can be divided into state
anxiety and trait anxiety. The former reflects psychological and physi­
ological transient reactions directly related to a specific moment. The
latter is the general tendency to experience anxiety(Quigley et al.,
2012). For the α band, the experimental results of state anxiety and trait
anxiety are diametrically opposed. Normal subjects with high state
anxiety presented higher α band energy than those with low state anx­
iety, while depressed subjects with high trait anxiety had lower α wave
energy than those with low trait anxiety (Knyazev et al., 2004; Pavlenko
et al., 2009).
Human thermal comfort is defined as “the psychological state of
expressing satisfaction with thermal environment” by the international
standard ISO7730 (Organization 1994). The predictive mean voting
(PMV) proposed by Fanger (Fanger and Toftum 2002) takes the basic
equation of human thermal balance and the grade of psychophysiolog­
ical subjective thermal sensation as the starting point and considers the
comprehensive evaluation index of many factors related to human
thermal comfort. It reflects the relationship between individual thermal
sensation and the environment. The PMV-based research mainly relies
on environmental information such as air temperature and humidity.
Based on the results of the subjective questionnaire, the thermal
balancing model of the human body is established (Kandjov 1998), the
diversity of individual thermal comfort is discussed (ShahinHeidari and
SteveSharples 2002), and the application and simulation of thermal
comfort are conducted (Zhang et al., 2017). Nevertheless, it cannot
explain the physiological and subjective reactions varying in hot and
humid environments, and does not apply to the prediction of the thermal
sensation of people in dynamic activities (Tan et al., 2017). To solve this
problem, one study investigated HRV changes in subjects by performing
heavy physical simulations and measuring electrocardiographic data. A
questionnaire was used to investigate the relationship between the HRV
index and subjective heat sensation. HRV index was found to be a good
biomarker for predicting thermal comfort in miners (Wu, Liu et al.).
Guan (Guan et al., 2020) found that the total parietal EEG energy was
smaller in the comfortable environment than in the uncomfortable
environment. The theta band of the frontal pole was significantly
increased when the subjects were comfortable. Lang (Lang et al., 2021)
find that he relative power of electroencephalogram signals has a sig­
nificant correlation with thermal comfort and performance of neuro­
behavioral tests. Recently, EEG caps, eye-tracking devices, and other
physiological testing equipment are adopted in increasing studies to
monitor personnel and explore the relationship between physiological
changes and thermal sensation objectively. Wearable sensing technol­
ogy monitoring physiological parameters of body parts in non-invasive
manners has been verified to be effective in identify and predict peo­
ple’s thermal state (Chaudhuri et al., 2018). The study (Kanosuea et al.,
2002) that utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
showed that thermal signals from skin can reach serval regions in the
cerebral cortex. And another study showed that increased relative hu­
midity and increased temperature at high relative humidity caused
measurable changes in EEG (Zhu et al., 2019). These indicate that the
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International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423
thermal comfort and thermal discomfort of humans could be reflected by
the EEG.
Some studies have highlighted the topic of model creation for iden­
tifying emotions based on physiological indicators. Analysis of Variance
(ANOVA) (Knyazev et al., 2004), Support Vector Machine (SVM)
(Valenzi et al., 2014; Hajinoroozi et al., 2016; Pereira et al., 2021),
Logistic Regression (LR) (Lee et al., 2020), Random Forest (RF) (Acharya
et al., 2018), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) (Zhang et al., 2017),
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) (Acharya et al., 2018), and Deep
Learning (DL) are popular tools for analyzing and predicting physio­
logical indicators. Zheng (Zheng and Lu 2015) constructed the EEG
emotion recognition model based on the Deep Belief Networks (DBNs) to
distinguish positive emotions, neutral emotions, and negative emotions.
Furthermore, Deep Models outperformed shallow models for EEG data
(such as K-nearest neighbor algorithm (KNN), LR, and SVM). Arsalan
(Arsalan and Majid 2021) proposed a framework for trait anxiety
detection based on resting-state EEG data. The classification accuracy of
anxiety recognition and classification based on RF reached 87.69% and
83.07%, respectively. They pointed out that the results of using RF were
better compared to Multilayer Perceptron and LR. The selection of
appropriate features and high recognition accuracy is related to not only
the model but also the feature extraction method. In terms of anxiety
recognition accuracy, EEG outperforms EDA and pupil size (Lee et al.,
2020). However, introducing other physiological data based on EEG
data can improve the accuracy of measuring human psychological and
physical changes (Yao et al., 2008). EEG features extracted by Partial
Autocorrelation (PACF) were moderately correlated with anxiety levels,
and mean pulse rate could also be used as a potential anxiety feature for
individualized anxiety measurement. With both EEG and photo­
plethysmography (PPG) features, the accuracy of classifying three anx­
iety levels using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and KNN can be
increased to 62.5% (Zheng et al., 2016). The study of drivers in the
thermal environment of the automobile cabin (Shin et al., 2016)
revealed that the use of PPG and EEG was suitable for the evaluation of
concentration, stress, and thermal comfort.
However, the existing studies still have some limitations. 1) Most of
the research has been conducted in normal temperature and humidity
ranges, especially on subjects’ anxiety, without considering the effects of
high-temperature environments. 2) The existing studies have not
simultaneously focused on the relationship between anxiety, thermal
comfort, and physiological characteristics in high-temperature and high-
humidity environments. Whether there are physiological signals can
reflect both anxiety and thermal comfort remains to be explored. 3) The
existing literature has more EEG channels to be monitored, which can
create difficulties for practical applications. Whether fewer physiolog­
ical features can be used to reflect both anxiety and thermal comfort is
an interesting research direction.
The present study aims to establish the quick identification method
of personnel anxiety level and thermal comfort level in hot and humid
environments. This contributes to significantly shorten the monitoring
preparation time, reduce the amount of data calculation, and improve
the detection speed. In Section 2, a series of labor experiments were
designed under different working conditions to collect valid subjective
and physiological data (EEG data, eye movement data, and PPG data) in
order to obtain a valuable raw data set. And the raw data set was pre­
processed to obtain cleaner data. In Section 3, the data obtained from the
experiments demonstrated that personnel anxiety level is positively
correlated with the temperature-humidity situation of the environment,
and thermal comfort level is negatively correlated with the temperature-
humidity situation of the environment. Random Forest was utilized to
select the appropriate sensitive features of anxiety and thermal comfort
levels from 70 features of 10 brain channels. The suitable physiological
data combination and modeling algorithm were further selected using
Random Forest (RF), Gradient Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT), K-nearest
Neighbor Algorithm (KNN), and Support Vector Machine (SVM).
Finally, the conclusions are drawn in Section 4.
Y. Jiao et al. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423

2. Methods Table 2
Basic information about subjects.
2.1. Experimental environment and objects Gender Quantity Age（year-old） Height（cm） Weight（kg）

Male 7 22.8 ± 2.2 175.4 ± 5.6 65.2 ± 9.8

The experiments were carried out in the air conditioning laboratory Female 2 23.5 ± 0.5 160 ± 0.5 52.5 ± 3.5
chamber with a nominal volume of 8 cubic meters. The temperature in
the experimental chamber can be regulated from − 20 ◦ C to +80 ◦ C, with
an accuracy of ≤±0.5 ◦ C and an error of <2 ◦ C. The relative humidity The experiment would be terminated if the subject was unable to endure
ranges from 20% to 95%, with a margin of error which is less than 3%. A further heat exposure or presented aberrant physical symptoms.
treadmill was placed in the chamber and adopted to simulate different Before the experiment, subjects were asked to rest in the lounge room
levels of labor intensity. for about 20min to stabilize physiological indicators. The temperature
Working conditions above 32 ◦ C and residential environments above and humidity of the lounge room were set at 26 ◦ C and 50%, respec­
35 ◦ C are regarded as high-temperature environments, and environ­ tively, which is a comfortable environment for the human body. During
ments with relative humidity above 60% are considered as high hu­ this period, subjects were wearing experimental devices and were
midity environments (He 2000). In this paper, the temperature variables instructed on the experiment content as well as the precautions to be
were set at 32 ◦ C, 35 ◦ C, and 38 ◦ C, for a total of three levels; the relative taken. Then, the monitoring devices were switched on, and the physi­
humidity variables were set at 60% and 80%, for a total of two levels. ological indicators of the subject in a comfortable, relaxed state were
The air conditioning laboratory chamber was used to test various com­ recorded. After entering the chamber, the experiment consisted of 4
binations of working conditions. According to the labor class classifi­ cycles of work stages and questionnaire writing stages. Each working
cation issued by ACGIH(Standardization 1989), the labor intensity was stage lasted 20 min, during which subjects performed a predetermined
classified into three types: i) light labor intensity was designated as labor intensity wearing physiological monitoring devices. Subjects
remaining sedentary allowing reading books, using mobile phones and completed an S-Anxiety Inventory and a Physiology Questionnaire for
computers; ii) medium labor intensity was designated as slow walking at 10 min at each questionnaire writing session. The experimental pro­
a speed of 3 km/h on the treadmill with no incline; iii) heavy labor in­ cedure is illustrated in Fig. 1.
tensity was designated as fast walking at a speed of 5 km/h on the
treadmill with no incline. 10 combinations of experimental conditions 2.3. Data acquisition
are exhibited in Table 1.
The study population comprised 9 subjects (7 males and 2 females), I. EEG
aged 21–25 years. A total of 40 experiences were carried out, with an
average of 4 or 5 experiences under different working conditions per Bitbrain water-based EEG cap was used to capture EEG signals in this
subject. To eliminate the thermal effect, there is no case of the same study, which is composed of 32-channel sensors positioned on the sub­
person doing the experiment twice on the same day. Table 2 presents the jects’ scalp according to the international 10–10 system. The earlobe of
basic information about the subjects. Age, height, and weight of subjects the right ear was chosen as the reference electrode.
are expressed as Mean ± SEM. All the subjects were healthy, with no The frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes make up the ce­
history of psychiatric or neurological disorders. Prior to the experiment, rebral cortex. The frontal lobe (González et al., 2000) is associated with
they were required to have a good sleep and diet. They were not higher cognitive abilities such as emotion, decision making, attention,
permitted to consume alcohol 24 h before the test and take food 1 h and short-term memory. The temporal lobe (Binder et al., 2000) pro­
before the test. During the experiment, the subjects dressed as uniformly cesses auditory information and semantic understanding. The parietal
as possible: short-sleeved T-shirts, single pants, socks, and sneakers. The lobe (Bisley and Goldberg 2010) integrates information from external
clothing insulation was estimated to be 0.5–0.6 clo. The experiments sources as well as internal sensory information from skeletal muscles,
were performed by the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki limbs, head, eyes, and ears to coordinate the relationship between the
(Association(WMA) 2013). human body and surrounding objects. The occipital lobe (Braun and
Guimond 2008) is the center of visual processing, including low-level
visual-spatial processing, color discrimination, and motion perception.
2.2. Experiment procedure The brain originally did not have a central region. Nonetheless, a central
region was artificially added, such as C3 and C4 in relation to move­
One subject performed an experiment at a time for 2 h, with each ment, to facilitate the identification of more typical EEG activity. As
work stage lasting 20min and questionnaire writing stage lasting 10 min. shown in Fig. 2, 10 channels including Fp1, Fp2, F3, F4, C3, C4, P3, P4,
Fpz, and Cz were chosen for the study.
Table 1
Experimental conditions. II. eye-tracking
Working Temperature Relative Labor intensity
Condition Humidity Tobii Pro Glasses 2 wearable eye-tracking device was used to acquire
1 32 ◦ C 60% Light labor intensity the Eye-tracking signals. It adopted the tracking technology of pupillary
2 32 ◦ C 60% Medium labor corneal reflex and dark pupil acquisition in both eyes. The sampling rate
intensity was 100 Hz, the horizontal acquisition field was 160◦ , and the vertical
3 32 ◦ C 80% Light labor intensity
4 32 ◦ C 80% Medium labor
acquisition field was 70◦ .
intensity
5 35 ◦ C 60% Light labor intensity III. PPG
6 35 ◦ C 60% Medium labor
intensity
A wireless blood-volume transducer with a precision of 16bit and a
7 35 ◦ C 60% Heavy labor intensity
8 35 ◦ C 80% Light labor intensity sampling rate of 64 Hz was used to collect the PPG of the subjects. The
9 35 ◦ C 80% Medium labor pulse sensor’s ear clip was clipped to the earlobe, and the band was
intensity attached to the arm or wrist during sampling.
10 38 ◦ C 60% Medium labor
intensity
IV. subjective questionnaire

3
Y. Jiao et al.
Fig. 1. Flow of experiment.
Fig. 2. 32-Channel EEG
The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), developed by Charles
Spielberger in 1977 (Julian 2011) and revised in 1983, is one of the most
widely used questionnaires for subjective assessment of anxiety. A large
body of prior evidence has demonstrated the usefulness and validity of
this questionnaire (Barnes et al., 2002). This is a self-assessment ques­
tionnaire that uses a 4-point Likert scale to grade each question (1–4
represent not at all, somewhat, moderately so, and very much so,
respectively) (Zsido et al., 2020). It consists of separate self-report scales
measuring two distinct anxiety concepts: state anxiety and trait anxiety,
each having 20 statements. So it is characterized by its simplicity, high
validity, ease of analysis, and the ability to reflect the subjective feelings
of the anxious patient. The STAI-T is used to describe how people feel in
general, and the STAI-S is adopted to demonstrate how people feel at a
particular moment. This study simply needs to refer to STAI-S because it
only needs to analyze the extent of the subjects’ current anxiety symp­
toms. The possible scores range from a minimum score of 20 to a
maximum score of 80, with higher scores signifying higher anxiety
levels. Depending on the score, the anxiety state of the questionnaire
respondents can be classified into two (Julian 2011) or three categories.
The three-category grouping method was selected in this paper. These
three groups include “no or low anxiety” (20–37 score), “moderate
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International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423
anxiety” (38–44 score), and “high anxiety” (45–80 score) (Kayikcioglu
et al., 2017).
Thermal comfort is defined as the state of consciousness in which the
human body expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment (Or­
ganization 1994). It differs from thermal sensation in that thermal
sensation is assumed to be associated with the activity of thermore­
ceptors in the skin, whereas thermal comfort is assumed to be dependent
on thermoregulatory responses of regulatory centers. Since the thermal
sensation is only a physiological sensation and thermal comfort is
related to psychology and physiology, thermal comfort is chosen for
analysis and modeling in this paper. Thermal Comfort Vote (TCV) was
used to capture participants’ real-time thermal comfort level and un­
comfortable symptom level of subjects was collected by Symptom
Questionnaire. According to what the American Society of Heating,
Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) specifies,
thermal comfort is scored on a seven-point scale (from − 3 to 3) as shown
in Table 3, which can reflect the subjective state of subjects accurately
and intuitively. Symptoms include uncomfortable throat, thirsty, dizzy,
decreased thinking ability, distracted, runny nose and stuffy nose. And
these Symptoms were measured on a five-point scale, with 0–4 repre­
senting no at all, slightly, somewhat, moderately, and very much,
respectively.
2.4. Physiological data processing
I. EEG
The volume of EEG signal data is too large for direct processing, so it
is necessary to reduce the dimensionality of the data by using the feature
extraction method. In this study, Power Spectrum Density (PSD) was
employed to extract features to reveal changes in the brains of the
subjects in various levels of states of anxiety and comfort.
Better classification results can be obtained when the duration of
EEG signals exceeds the 60s (Pereira et al., 2021). Therefore, a 1-min
EEG segment was intercepted every 2 min for study. During collec­
tion, EEG signals are sensitive to artifactual interference. The artifact
interference comes from two types: one is physical interference, which
mainly includes industrial frequency interference and environmental
noise caused by the acquisition of EEG equipment and the power supply
line itself; the other is physiological interference, which is mainly arti­
fact interference from cardiac activity, eye movement and muscle ac­
tivity to produce ECG, eye shadow and EMG. In order to remove the
Y. Jiao et al. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423

Table 3
TCV questionnaire.
Thermal Comfort Level at This Moment:

− 3 − 2 − 1 0 1 2 3

Very uncomfortable Uncomfortable A little uncomfortable Moderate Somewhat comfortable Comfortable Very comfortable

above interference as much as possible and reduce the influence on the
classification model, therefore, the original EEG signal needs to be
filtered and de-noised to improve the signal-to-noise ratio and obtain a
better decision model. The ErgoLAB synchronization platform was used
to remove eye movement artifacts and power frequency interference by
preprocessing the signal with a 1 Hz high-pass filter, a 70 Hz low-pass
filter, and a 50 Hz band-stop filter. It produced relatively “clean”
signal data for the following feature extraction of EEG signals.
According to the frequency magnitude, EEG signals are typically
divided into δ wave (1–4 Hz), θ wave (4–8 Hz), α wave (8–14 Hz), β
wave (14–30 Hz), and γ wave (>30 Hz). θ waves are generally more
noticeable in the parietal and temporal regions and are only pronounced
in healthy individuals when they are drowsy, frustrated, or depressed. α
waves can be detected in all regions, especially in the occipital and
parietal lobes. They are the main electrical activity of the cerebral cortex
while the brain is awake. β waves represent brain arousal and are more
prominent in the frontal and central lobes. They are usually more
noticeable when the person is awake, mentally active, concentrating on
work, thinking intensely, and mentally stressed. θ, α, β, α/β, θ/β, (θ+α)/β
and (θ+α)/(α+β) are chosen for analysis in this paper. To strengthen the
robustness of the 8 features, the 1min EEG data were separated into 60
equal pieces in 1 s units. Furthermore, the features within each second
were calculated separately. The outliers were removed by triple stan­
dard deviation and finally averaged to obtain the features for every 1
min.
II. pupil size
Changes in pupil size are influenced by both light and stimulus fac­
tors. The experiments are conducted in a small limited chamber where
the light changes are controlled, allowing the state of the individual to
be indicated by changes in the pupil. The pupil is closely associated with
emotions and is frequently applied as a measure of mood changes. In
usual, individuals with high anxiety had a larger mean pupil diameter
than those with low or no anxiety (Bertrand et al., 2013).
Additionally, a 1-min EEG segment was intercepted every 2 min for
research purposes. The data were pre-processed by linear interpolation
and sliding median filtering methods to obtain the mean pupil diameter.
To strengthen the robustness of the features, the 1min mean pupil
diameter was divided into 60 equal pieces into 1 s units. The features
within each second were calculated separately. The outliers were
removed by triple standard deviation and finally averaged to obtain the
pupil diameter for every 1 min.
anxiety group (Zheng et al., 2016).
One-minute PPG segment was intercepted every 2 min for research
purpose. HRV analysis was performed on each PPG signal segment, and
the noise-removed data was obtained by pre-processing methods such as
wavelet filter, amplitude normalization, high-pass filtering, low-pass
filtering, R-peak extraction, anisotropy detection, and anisotropy
correction. In order to strengthen the robustness of HRV features, the
1min mean LF/HF and RMSSD were divided into 60 equal pieces in 1 s
units. The features within each second were calculated separately. The
outliers were removed by triple standard deviation and finally averaged
to obtain LF/HF and RMSSD for every 1 min.
3. Analysis and discussion
3.1. The effect of hot and humid environment on subjective measurement
index
Changes in mental mood and emotional state are the first signs of
environmental influences on human neurobehavior(Sun et al., 2022).
This subsequently leads to changes in perception, memory, recognition,
and work performance.
I. The effect on anxiety level
Fig. 3 depicted the mean anxiety levels of subjects at each test time
point under six different working conditions. With time, subjects’ anx­
iety levels in hot and humid conditions presented an overall upward
trend. All other things being equal, the change in temperatures had a
significant impact on anxiety levels. Remarkably, the mean anxiety level
increases sharply in the first 90 min from a mere score of 37.33 to the
score of 53.67 and remains stable at a higher level after 90 min when the
temperature reaches 38 ◦ C. Anxiety levels also climbed with an increase
in relative humidity. Anxiety levels increased steadily over 2 h when the
relative humidity was at 80%. Heavy labor intensity could have a sig­
nificant psychological impact on subjects from the first 30 min and keep

III. HRV

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) reflects the variation of Inter-Beat In­

terval (IBI) and is closely related to emotional arousal. LF/HF and
RMSSD are selected as the features representing the variation of HRV
(Fumiharu and Masaya 2009). The ratio of low frequency(LF) to high
frequency(HF) (Yao et al., 2008) is one of the frequency domain analysis
indexes. It implies not only the balanced control of the autonomic nerve
but also the activity of the sympathetic nerve. The RMSSD (Wu, Liu
et al.) is a sensitive biomarker of parasympathetic function that indicates
rapid fluctuations in heart rate. Its value decreases when the para­
sympathetic tone is diminished. Previous studies demonstrated that the
median LF/HF of subjects in the high anxiety group was higher than that
in the low anxiety group, while RMSSD was lower than that in the low
Fig. 3. Anxiety level under different working conditions.

5
Y. Jiao et al. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423

them in a relatively constant state of high anxiety.

II. The effect on the thermal comfort level

Fig. 4 exhibited the mean thermal comfort levels of subjects at each

test time point under six different working conditions. Thermal comfort
levels at 32 ◦ C and 35 ◦ C during the first 90 min of the experiment were
negatively correlated with the length of time and tended to stabilize
afterward. Thermal discomfort at 38 ◦ C became more apparent with
increasing working hours.
The thermal comfort level decreased with the increasing temperature
when relative humidity and labor intensity remained constant. The
thermal comfort level dropped sharply when the temperature rose from
32 ◦ C to 35 ◦ C. As the relative humidity increased from 60% to 80%,
subjects felt stiflingly hot and uncomfortable and their thermal comfort
level dropped dramatically. The thermal comfort level of subjects in an
80% environment decreased steeply between 30 and 60 min and
continued to decline thereafter. It can be demonstrated that the relative
humidity of the environment significantly impacts the subjects’
perception of temperature. The thermal comfort level also decreased
with the increase in labor intensity. With the labor intensity increasing
from low to medium, the average difference in thermal comfort level
score was around 1, whereas the difference between the medium and
heavy labor intensity states was insignificant. Fig. 5. Spearman’s correlation heat map.

a coefficient of − 0.54. In high temperatures and relative humidity

3.2. Spearman’s correlation between thermal comfort level and symptoms
Spearman’s correlation is suitable for the correlation analysis with
hierarchical variables and can investigate the correlation degree be­
tween 2 non-normal or unknown distribution variables.
Thermal comfort belongs to subjective sensation, while throat
discomfort, dry mouth, dizziness, decreased thinking ability, difficulty
concentrating, runny nose, and blocked nose are objective discomfort
symptoms. Spearman’s correlation was adopted to analyze the correla­
tion between thermal comfort level and seven types of discomfort
symptoms. The correlation heat map between variable elements was
shown in Fig. 5, which implied that every symptom was significantly
correlated with thermal comfort. The first column of the figure shows
the correlation between thermal comfort and each symptom. The last 6
columns show the correlations between symptoms. The greater the
severity of the symptoms, the lower the thermal comfort level. The dry
mouth had the strongest negative correlation with thermal comfort,
with a coefficient of − 0.57, followed by decreased thinking ability, with
Fig. 4. Thermal comfort level under different working conditions.
conditions, the correlation between decreased thinking ability and dif­
ficulty in concentrating was higher than 0.7, and the correlation coef­
ficient between a runny nose and blocked nose was 0.65, both of which
presented a relatively strong positive correlation.
3.3. EEG features selection
RF was employed to analyze the importance of 70 EEG features. It is
a typical machine learning method, that uses multiple classification
trees to discriminate and classify data. It can also provide the impor­
tance score of each variable (genes) and evaluate the function of each
variable in the classification while classifying data.
Based on the 1592 sets of valid data from 40 experiments in 9 sub­
jects, their anxiety levels at each stage were classified into different
anxiety groups, including 300 cases of no or low anxiety, 589 cases of
moderate anxiety, and 703 cases of high anxiety. RF was constructed
and trained to prioritize the importance of 70 EEG features. The
importance and ranking of each feature were offered in Fig. 6, with the
angular size of the small sectors representing the importance score of the
features. It can be observed that the importance score of the first 6
features had a large gradient compared with other features, which were
all more than 0.02. Therefore, the 7 features were temporarily selected
as the main features reflecting the anxiety level of subjects, including α,
θ, β of F4 channel, α, θ of F3 channel, θ of Fp2 channel, andβ of P3
channel.
Based on the 1624 sets of valid data from 40 experiments in 9 sub­
jects, their thermal comfort levels at each stage were classified into 4
thermal comfort groups: 278 cases of moderate (0), 605 cases of some­
what uncomfortable (− 1), 540 cases of uncomfortable (− 2), and 201
cases of very uncomfortable (− 3). RF was constructed and trained to
prioritize the importance of 70 EEG features. The importance score and
ranking of each feature were presented in Fig. 7, with the angular size of
the small sectors representing the importance score of the features. As
demonstrated in the figure, the importance score of the first 5 features
presented a large gradient compared to other features, which were all
more than 0.02. Therefore, the 5 features were temporarily selected as
the main features reflecting the thermal comfort level of subjects, con­
taining α and θ of F3 channel, α/β of Fp1 channel, α/βof F4 channel, and
θ of P3 channel.

6
Y. Jiao et al.
Fig. 6. Anxiety level - EEG feature importance score.
Fig. 7. Thermal comfort level - EEG feature importance score.
3.4. Classification performance
In this study, four algorithms (RF, GBDT, KNN, and SVM) were
adopted to train and predict the physiological features group, respec­
tively, in order to create a quick convenient test method that can predict
the anxiety level and thermal comfort level accurately. Considering that
the number of detection channels and the type of physiological equip­
ment would significantly affect the detection time, data analysis quan­
tity, and cost consumption, the number of detection index should be
reduced as much as possible. The model’s prediction performance was
evaluated comprehensively by three evaluation indexes: Precision,
Recall, and F1-score. Precision indicates the proportion of positive
samples predicted to be positive, which is calculated based on Eq. (1). In
this equation, TP denotes that the positive classes are predicted to be
True Positive and FP demonstrates that negative classes are predicted as
False Positive.
P = TP / (TP + FP) (1)
Recall is defined as the proportion of positive samples predicted to be
positive across all positive classes, which is calculated based on Eq. (2),
where FN denotes that the positive classes are predicted as False
Negative.
R = TP / (TP + FN) (2)
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International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423
F1-score is the harmonic mean of Precision and Recall. Since this
study was a multi-classification problem, three evaluation indexes were
calculated for each group. Then, the weighted average was taken to
obtain the final Precision, Recall, and F1-score.
I. Anxiety level classification performance
7 features with high importance scores had been filtered out by the
RF algorithm and are grouped into Large Group 1. Among these 7 fea­
tures, 3 of them belonged to the F4 channel. Thus, assuming that the
changes in this channel were substantially correlated with the anxiety
level of subjects, the 7 features of the F4 channel were classified into
Large Group 2. Since the 7 features in Large Group1 belonged to F4, F3,
Fp2 and P3, respectively, the 28 features of these Four channels
composed Large Group3. Each large group contained 3 groups: EEG
Features Group, EEG feature + HRV Feature Group, and EEG Feature +
HRV Feature + Pupil Group. Table 4 shows the grouping of anxiety level
– physiological feature.
The four algorithms of RF, GBDT, KNN, and SVM were used to
construct the anxiety classification model for the 9 groups of data in the
table above. Among them, 80% of the data was used as training data,
and 20% of the data was used as test data. The traversal method was
used to explore the metrics with the best performance and then calculate
the weighted average Precision, Recall, and F1. In Fig. 8A and B, and C
Y. Jiao et al.
Table 4
Anxiety level – physiological feature group.
Large Group Physiological Feature
Group
1 (1) α[F4], β[F4], θ[F3], θ[Fp2], θ[F4], β[P3], α[F3]
(2) α[F4], β[F4], θ[F3], θ[Fp2], θ[F4], β[P3], α[F3], RMSSD, LF/
HF
(3) α[F4], β[F4], θ[F3], θ[Fp2], θ[F4], β[P3], α[F3],
RMSSD, LF/HF, Mean pupil diameter
2 (4) θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F4]
(5) θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F4], RMSSD, LF/HF
(6) θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F4], RMSSD, LF/HF, Mean pupil diameter
3 (7) θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F4],
θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F3],
θ[Fp2], α[Fp2], β[Fp2], α/β[Fp2], θ/β[Fp2], (α+θ)/β[Fp2],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[Fp2],
θ[P3], α[P3], β[P3], α/β[P3], θ/β[P3], (α+θ)/β[P3],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[P3]
(8) θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F4],
θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F3],
θ[Fp2], α[Fp2], β[Fp2], α/β[Fp2], θ/β[Fp2], (α+θ)/β[Fp2],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[Fp2],
θ[P3], α[P3], β[P3], α/β[P3], θ/β[P3], (α+θ)/β[P3],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[P3],
RMSSD, LF/HF
(9) θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F4],
θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F3],
θ[Fp2], α[Fp2], β[Fp2], α/β[Fp2], θ/β[Fp2], (α+θ)/β[Fp2],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[Fp2],
θ[P3], α[P3], β[P3], α/β[P3], θ/β[P3], (α+θ)/β[P3],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[P3],
RMSSD, LF/HF, Mean pupil diameter
indicated the Precision, Recall, and F1-score of Anxiety Level – Physi­
ological Feature Large Group 1 modeled by four algorithms, respec­
tively; D, E, and F showed the Precision, Recall, and F1-score of Large
Group 2 modeled by four algorithms, respectively; G, H, and I repre­
sented the Precision, Recall and F1-score of Large Group 3 modeled by
four algorithms, respectively. The exact values are shown in Appendix 1.
By comparing the accuracy obtained by predicting data with each of the
four algorithms, the algorithm’s results with the most remarkable ac­
curacy are bolded, which is what we focus on in our analysis and
discussion.
As shown in Fig. 8, adding pupil diameter and HRV characteristic
value can increase the accuracy of the prediction results while keeping
the EEG feature values constant. The increase in accuracy was between
2% and 3%, and the increase in recall and F1 was between 2.5% and
4.5% when only the two HRV features (RMSSD, LF/HF) were added.
When HRV features and mean pupil diameter were added simulta­
neously, the increase in accuracy for each Large Group was between 3%
and 8%, the increase in recall was between 3% and 10%, and the in­
crease in F1 was between 3% and 9%.
The anxiety level modeling performance demonstrated that for Large
Group 1, SVM and RF were more suitable for constructing a detection
model than the other algorithms. For Large Group 2, KNN and RF was
more suitable for constructing a Predictive model. For Large Group 3, RF
obtain higher accuracy for constructing a detection model than other
algorithms.
Overall, the prediction results of Large Group 3 were significantly
better than those of Large Group 1 and Large Group 2. F4 channel, F3
channel, Fp2 channel and P3 channel have the most potential for
establishing relation between anxiety and EEG signals. This means that
8
International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423
the best prediction results can only be obtained by simultaneously
modeling these four channels’ features. By comparing the results of
group (7) and group (9), the accuracy increased from 78.50% to 81.04%,
the recall increased from 77.94% to 80.88%, and the F1 increased from
78.03% to 80.94% when both HRV features and mean pupil diameter
feature were included.
P3 belongs to the parietal lobe. F4, F3 and Fp2 belong to the frontal
lobe. The frontal lobe is associated with higher cognitive abilities such as
emotion. And it is argued that frontal lobe differences in activation track
emotional valence or mood, with left-frontal lobe activation associated
with positive stimuli or mood, however right-frontal lobe activation
associated with negative stimuli or mood (Heller et al., 1998). Three of
the four EEG channels to be monitored obtained from the results of this
paper belong to the frontal lobe, and two of them belong to the
right-frontal, which corroborates the longstanding argument. The pari­
etal lobe has also been mentioned in the research as being associated
with mood changes in humans (Cole et al., 2014), but the number of
literatures is small. The results of this paper can be corroborated to some
extent.
As a result, PPG, pupil diameter, and EEG of P3 channel, F4 channel,
F3 channel, and Fp2 channel should be monitored for the workers in the
workplace. RMSSD, LF/HF, mean pupil diameter and the 28 features of
P3, F4, F3 and Fp2 are chosen for modeling and analysis to achieve a
better prediction performance.
II. Thermal comfort level classification performance
Five features with high importance scores had been filtered out by
the RF algorithm and are grouped into Large Group 1. Among these 5
features, 2 of them belonged to the F3 channel. Assuming that the
fluctuation of the F3 channel was strongly correlated with the thermal
comfort level of subjects, these 7 features of the F3 channel were clas­
sified into Large Group 2. Since the 5 features in Large Group1 belonged
to P3, Fp1, F4, and F3, respectively, the 28 features of these four
channels composed Large Group3. Each large group contained 3 groups:
EEG Features Group, EEG feature + HRV Feature Group, and EEG
Feature + HRV Feature + Pupil Group. The grouping of anxiety level –
physiological feature was presented in Table 5.
The four algorithms of RF, GBDT, KNN, and SVM were utilized to
construct the thermal comfort level classification model for the 9 groups
of data in the table above. Among them, 80% of the data was used as
training data and 20% of the data was used as test data. The traversal
method was adopted to find the metrics with the best performance, from
which the weighted average Precision, Recall, and F1-score were
calculated. In Fig. 9A and B, and C represented the Precision, Recall, and
F1-score of Thermal Comfort Level – Physiological Feature Large Group
1 modeled by four algorithms, respectively; D, E, and F indicated the
Precision, Recall and F1-score of Large Group 2 modeled by four algo­
rithms, respectively; G, H, and I revealed the Precision, Recall, and F1-
score of Large Group 3 modeled by four algorithms, respectively. The
detailed values are shown in Appendix 2. Similarly, the data results with
the highest accuracy are bolded to facilitate the comparison of the ac­
curacy of the predicted data of the four algorithms, which is the focus of
our analysis and discussion.
Analysis of each Large Group with constant EEG eigenvalues showed
that, for Large Group 3, the inclusion of pupil diameter and HRV facil­
itated the accuracy of the prediction. All three evaluation indicators of
Group (8) were about 1.5% higher than those of Group (7). All three
metrics of Group (9) were about 2.5 percentage points higher than those
of Group 8). For Large Group 1 and Large Group 2, when only two HRV
characteristic values were increased, the prediction results became
preferable and all three evaluation indicators increased. However, when
HRV features and mean pupil diameter were added simultaneously, it
somewhat reduced the model’s performance. This indicates that the
pupil diameter interferes with the prediction results to some extent
when monitoring thermal comfort. The thermal comfort level modeling
Y. Jiao et al.
Fig. 8. Anxiety Level – Features prediction Performance.
performance demonstrated that for Groups, RF was most suitable for
constructing a detection model compared with the other three
algorithms.
Overall, Large Group 3 predicted significantly better results than
Large Group 1 and Large Group 2. F4 channel, F3 channel, Fp1 channel
and P3 channel have the most potential for establishing relation be­
tween thermal comfort and EEG signals. This means that the best pre­
diction results can only be obtained if all characteristic values of these
four channels are modeled simultaneously. These results are consistent
with the findings of Lang (Lang et al., 2021) and Yao (Yao et al., 2008)
on the relationship between EEG and thermal comfort, suggesting that
changes in EEG signals can provide useful information for the prediction
of thermal comfort scores in humans. By comparing the results of groups
(7) and (9), when both HRV characteristic values and mean pupil
diameter were added, the precision increased from 82.11% to 84.79%,
the recall increased from 81.86% to 84.07%, and the F1 score increased
from 81.84% to 84.00%.
P3 belongs to the parietal lobe. F4, F3 and Fp1 belong to the frontal
lobe. It follows that the brain activity in the parietal and frontal lobes is
related to the level of subjective comfort. Previous studies have noted
more significant changes in Fp1, Fp2, F3, T8 and C5 electrodes in
comfortable and uncomfortable environments (Guan et al., 2020). The
results of this paper can confirm that brain activity in the frontal lobe is
more closely related to human comfort sensation.
9
International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423
As a result, PPG, pupil diameter, and EEG of P3 channel, F4 channel,
F3 channel, and Fp1 channel should be monitored for the workers in the
workplace. RMSSD, LF/HF, mean pupil diameter and the 28 features of
P3, F4, F3 and Fp1 are chosen respectively for modeling and analysis to
achieve a better prediction performance.
4. Conclusions
1) By analyzing the subjective and physiological data obtained from the
experiments, it was demonstrated that there is a relationship be­
tween personnel anxiety state and the temperature and relative hu­
midity of the external environment, as well as a relationship between
personnel thermal comfort and the temperature and relative hu­
midity of the external environment. Therefore, to maintain produc­
tion safety, it is suggested that organizations develop a quick
identification method for anxiety state and thermal comfort level
based on physiological data of operators in hot and humid situations.
2) Thermal comfort was found to have a substantial negative link with
seven forms of objective discomforts, including throat discomfort,
dry mouth, dizziness, poor decreased thinking ability, difficulties
concentrating, a runny nose, and a blocked nose. The greater the
severity of the symptoms, the lower the level of thermal comfort.
Furthermore, dry mouth exhibited the strongest negative correlation
Y. Jiao et al. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423

Table 5 with thermal comfort, with a coefficient of − 0.57, followed by

Thermal comfort level – physiological feature group. impaired decreased thinking ability, with a coefficient of − 0.54.
Group Physiological Feature 3) PPG, pupil diameter, and EEG monitoring of the P3 channel, F4
channel, F3 channel, and Fp2 channel should be performed on
1 (1) θ[F3], α [F3], α/β[F4], α/β[Fp1], θ[P3]
(2) θ[F3], α [F3], α/β[F4], α/β[Fp1], θ[P3], RMSSD, LF/HF workers in the workplace to monitor their anxiety levels in real-time.
(3) θ[F3], α [F3], α/β[F4], α/β[Fp1], θ[P3], RMSSD, LF/HF, Mean pupil Choosing the following 31 characteristic values for modeling and
diameter analysis: θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4],
2 (4) θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F3] (α+θ)/(α+β)[F4], θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3],
(5) θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F3],
RMSSD, LF/HF,
(α+θ)/β[F3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F3], θ[Fp2], α[Fp2], β[Fp2], α/β[Fp2],
(6) θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F3], θ/β[Fp2], (α+θ)/β[Fp2], (α+θ)/(α+β)[Fp2], θ[P3], α[P3], β[P3],
RMSSD, LF/HF, Mean pupil diameter α/β[P3], θ/β[P3], (α+θ)/β[P3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[P3], RMSSD, LF/HF
3 (7) θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F3], and mean pupil diameter can improve prediction performance.
θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F4],
4) PPG, pupil diameter, and EEG monitoring of the P3 channel, F4
θ[Fp1], α[Fp1], β[Fp1], α/β[Fp1], θ/β[Fp1], (α+θ)/β[Fp1], (α+θ)/(α+β)
[Fp1], channel, F3 channel, and Fp1 channel should be performed on
θ[P3], α[P3], β[P3], α/β[P3], θ/β[P3], (α+θ)/β[P3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[P3] workers in the workplace to monitor their anxiety levels in real-time.
(8) θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F3], Choosing the following 31 characteristic values for modeling and
θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F4], analysis: θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4],
θ[Fp1], α[Fp1], β[Fp1], α/β[Fp1], θ/β[Fp1], (α+θ)/β[Fp1], (α+θ)/(α+β)
[Fp1],
(α+θ)/(α+β)[F4], θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3],
θ[P3], α[P3], β[P3], α/β[P3], θ/β[P3], (α+θ)/β[P3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[P3], (α+θ)/β[F3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F3], θ[Fp1], α[Fp1], β[Fp1], α/β[Fp1],
RMSSD,LF/HF θ/β[Fp1], (α+θ)/β[Fp1], (α+θ)/(α+β)[Fp1], θ[P3], α[P3], β[P3],
(9) θ[F3], α[F3], β[F3], α/β[F3], θ/β[F3], (α+θ)/β[F3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F3], α/β[P3], θ/β[P3], (α+θ)/β[P3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[P3], RMSSD, LF/HF
θ[F4], α[F4], β[F4], α/β[F4], θ/β[F4], (α+θ)/β[F4], (α+θ)/(α+β)[F4],
and mean pupil diameter can improve prediction performance.
θ[Fp1], α[Fp1], β[Fp1], α/β[Fp1], θ/β[Fp1], (α+θ)/β[Fp1], (α+θ)/(α+β)
[Fp1], 5) Compared with other lobes of the brain, parietal and frontal lobe
θ[P3], α[P3], β[P3], α/β[P3], θ/β[P3], (α+θ)/β[P3], (α+θ)/(α+β)[P3], activity have a better correlation with subjective human psycho­
RMSSD,LF/HF, Mean pupil diameter logical feelings, including anxiety and thermal comfort. In a high
temperature and humid environment, our results suggest that only

Fig. 9. Thermal comfort level – features prediction performance.

10
Y. Jiao et al. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423

PPG, pupil diameter, and 5 EEG channels need to be monitored to
obtain physiological data. By processing these data, a factual judg­
ment on workers’ anxiety and thermal comfort levels to ensure their
physiological and psychological safety can improve the quality and
efficiency of a monitor.
6) Overall, RF has advantage in terms of training and prediction ability
for different physiological feature groups.
The quick identification method of personnel anxiety level and
thermal comfort level in high temperatures and relative humidity pro­
duction environments was demonstrated in this study to significantly
shorten the monitoring preparation time, reduce the amount of data
calculation, and improve the detection speed. This provided theoretical
and technical support for physiological equipment used to detect anxiety
levels and thermal comfort levels in production environments.
5. Relevance to industry
Workers who labor in hot and humid environments for an extended
period of time endure not only physical but also psychological discom­
fort. The identification method is simple and quick, if it is adopted in
some future portable monitoring equipment, it will be well applied in
hot and humid industrial environment, such as mines and shipbuilders
to track anxiety level and thermal comfort level of workers in real time.
anxiety level and thermal comfort level in practical application. The
range of eigenvalues which can easily classify the anxiety level and
thermal comfort level in practice is the work that needs to be further
carried out in following research.
Author statement
Yu Jiao: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Validation,
Writing-Reviewing and Editing. Xiya Wang: Conceptualization, Meth­
odology, Experimentation, Investigation, Data analysis, Writing-
Original. Yutao Kang: Data Curation, validation. Zhiqu Zhong: Data
curation, Experimentation. Weijiong Chen: Conceptualization,
Methodology.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.

6. Limitations Acknowledgements

On the basis of ensuring the accuracy of the model, the minimum This work is financially supported by National Natural Science
monitoring channels and the minimum features are obtained in this Foundation of China (Grant No. 51109127). The authors deeply
paper, which is the basis for determining the features of distinguishing appreciate the supports.

Appendix 1. Anxiety Level – Prediction Performance

Group algorithm Precision Recall F1 Group algorithm Precision Recall F1

1-(1) RF 67.36% 67.65% 67.43% 1-(2) RF 69.99% 70.10% 69.67%

SVM 68.27% 68.14% 68.16% SVM 71.21% 71.08% 71.06%
KNN 64.36% 63.24% 63.27% KNN 63.53% 63.24% 63.27%
GBDT 64.52% 64.22% 64.27% GBDT 67.11% 67.16% 67.11%
1-(3) RF 72.90% 73.04% 72.87% 2-(4) RF 59.24% 59.80% 59.26%
SVM 68.12% 68.63% 68.21% SVM 61.82% 59.31% 59.38%
KNN 64.91% 65.20% 65.00% KNN 63.13% 61.76% 62.10%
GBDT 67.73% 68.14% 67.69% GBDT 61.79% 62.25% 61.84%
2-(5) RF 66.86% 66.67% 66.49% 2-(6) RF 71.21% 71.08% 70.96%
SVM 63.67% 62.25% 61.64% SVM 63.73% 63.73% 63.60%
KNN 57.91% 57.35% 57.29% KNN 60.77% 61.76% 60.97%
GBDT 63.22% 63.24% 62.77% GBDT 65.44% 65.20% 65.07%
3-(7) RF 78.50% 77.94% 78.03% 3-(8) RF 80.12% 79.90% 79.95%
SVM 74.06% 73.04% 72.96% SVM 74.23% 74.02% 73.99%
KNN 73.62% 73.04% 73.15% KNN 72.44% 71.08% 71.30%
GBDT 71.42% 71.57% 71.48% GBDT 73.21% 73.04% 73.01%

3-(9) RF 81.04% 80.88% 80.94%

SVM 73.29% 72.55% 72.36%
KNN 72.76% 72.06% 72.00%
GBDT 74.93% 75.00% 74.94%

Appendix 2. Thermal Comfort Level – Prediction Performance

Group algorithm Precision Recall F1 Group algorithm Precision Recall F1

1-(1) RF 72.55% 72.12% 71.93% 1-(2) RF 73.72% 73.01% 72.96%

SVM 64.83% 63.72% 62.73% SVM 60.74% 60.62% 59.73%
KNN 60.84% 60.18% 60.23% KNN 56.50% 57.52% 56.36%
GBDT 65.66% 65.04% 64.85% GBDT 64.93% 64.60% 64.25%
1-(3) RF 72.35% 71.68% 71.71% 2-(4) RF 66.78% 66.81% 66.57%
SVM 59.00% 59.29% 58.99% SVM 56.99% 57.96% 57.06%
(continued on next page)

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Y. Jiao et al. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics 94 (2023) 103423

(continued )
Group algorithm Precision Recall F1 Group algorithm Precision Recall F1

KNN 49.33% 49.56% 45.66% KNN 58.64% 60.18% 59.20%

GBDT 66.32% 65.49% 64.87% GBDT 63.41% 62.83% 62.36%
2-(5) RF 69.75% 69.47% 69.19% 2-(6) RF 68.83% 68.14% 68.08%
SVM 56.71% 57.08% 56.68% SVM 56.00% 56.19% 55.98%
KNN 55.06% 56.19% 55.27% KNN 52.93% 53.98% 52.41%
GBDT 59.13% 58.85% 57.99% GBDT 56.80% 57.08% 56.49%
3-(7) RF 82.11% 81.86% 81.84% 3-(8) RF 83.60% 83.19% 83.11%
SVM 78.05% 77.43% 77.48% SVM 75.10% 74.34% 74.28%
KNN 71.70% 70.35% 70.69% KNN 72.41% 70.35% 70.65%
GBDT 75.94% 75.66% 75.52% GBDT 76.27% 76.11% 75.97%

3-(9) RF 84.79% 84.07% 84.00%

SVM 73.46% 72.12% 72.19%
KNN 73.84% 72.57% 72.71%
GBDT 76.23% 76.11% 75.94%

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