Situation awareness or situational awareness, is the understanding of an environment, its elements, and how it changes with respect to time or other factors. It is also defined as the perception of the elements in the environment considering time and space, the understanding of their meaning, and the prediction of their status in the near future. It is also defined as adaptive, externally-directed consciousness focused on acquiring knowledge about a dynamic task environment and directed action within that environment.
Situation awareness is recognized as a critical foundation for successful decision making in many situations, including the ones which involve the protection of human life and property, such as law enforcement, aviation, air traffic control, ship navigation,Nullmeyer, R.T., Stella, D., Montijo, G.A., & Harden, S.W. (2005). Human factors in Air Force flight mishaps: Implications for change. Proceedings of the 27th Annual Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, and Education Conference (paper no. 2260). Arlington, VA: National Training Systems Association. health care, emergency response, military command and control operations, transmission system operators, self defense,; and offshore oil and nuclear power plant management.Flin, R. & O'Connor, P. (2001). Applying crew resource management in offshore oil platforms. In E. Salas, C.A. Bowers, & E. Edens (Eds.), Improving teamwork in organization: Applications of resource management training (pp. 217–233). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Inadequate situation awareness has been identified as one of the primary causal factors in accidents attributed to human error.Hartel, C.E.J., Smith, K., & Prince, C. (1991, April). Defining aircrew coordination: Searching mishaps for meaning. Paper presented at the 6th International Symposium on Aviation Psychology, Columbus, OH.Merket, D.C., Bergondy, M., & Cuevas-Mesa, H. (1997, March). Making sense out of teamwork errors in complex environments. Paper presented at the 18th Annual Industrial/Organizational-Organizational Behavior Graduate Student Conference, Roanoke, VA.Endsley, M. R. (1995). A taxonomy of situation awareness errors. In R. Fuller, N. Johnston & N. McDonald (Eds.), Human factors in aviation operations (pp. 287-292). Aldershot, England: Avebury Aviation, Ashgate Publishing Ltd.Jones, D. G., & Endsley, M. R. (1996). Sources of situation awareness errors in aviation. Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine, 67(6), 507-512. According to Endsley's situation awareness theory, when someone meets a dangerous situation, that person needs an appropriate and precise decision-making process which includes pattern recognition and matching, formation of sophisticated frameworks and fundamental knowledge that aids correct decision making.Construction safety and health hazard awareness in Web of Science and Weibo between 1991 and 2021, Safety Science, 152, August 2022, 105790
Definition The formal definition of situational awareness is often described as three ascending levels:
Perception of the elements in the environment, Comprehension or understanding of the situation, and Projection of future status.
People with the highest levels of situational awareness not only perceive the relevant information for their goals and decisions, but are also able to integrate that information to understand its meaning or significance, and are able to project likely or possible future scenarios. These higher levels of situational awareness are critical for proactive decision making in demanding environments.
Three aspects of situational awareness have been the focus in research: situational awareness states, situational awareness systems, and situational awareness processes. Situational awareness states refers to the actual level of awareness people have of the situation. Situational awareness systems refers to technologies that are developed to support situational awareness in many environments. Situational awareness processes refers to the updating of situational awareness states, and what guides the moment-to-moment change of situational awareness.
History Although the term itself is fairly recent, the concept has roots in the history of military theory—it is recognizable in Sun Tzu's The Art of War, for example.Sun Tzu The Art of War Chapter X, 地形 The term can be traced to World War I, where it was recognized as a crucial skill for crews in military aircraft.Press, M. (1986). Situation awareness: Let's get serious about the clue-bird. Unpublished manuscript.
There is evidence that the term situational awareness was first employed at the Douglas Aircraft Company during human factors engineering research while developing vertical and horizontal situation displays and evaluating digital-control placement for the next generation of commercial aircraft. Research programs in flight-crew computer interactionBiferno, M.A. "Flight Crew Computer Interaction", Douglas Aircraft Company, Internal Research and Development. Long Beach, CA. and mental workload measurementBiferno, M.A., "Mental Workload Measurement", Douglas Aircraft Company, Internal Research and Development, Long Beach, CA. built on the concept of awareness measurement from a series of experiments that measured contingency awareness during learning,Dawson, M.E., Biferno, M.A. (1973). "Concurrent measurement of awareness and electrodermal classical conditioning", Journal of Experimental Psychology, 101, 55-62. and later extended to mental workload and fatigue.Biferno, M.A. (1985). "Relationship between event-related potential components and ratings of workload and fatigue", NASA-Ames, Moffett Field, CA, NASA contract report 177354.
Situation awareness appears in the technical literature as early as 1983, when describing the benefits of a prototype touch-screen navigation display.Biferno, M. A. & Stanley, D. L. (1983). The Touch-Sensitive Control/Display Unit: A promising Computer Interface. Technical Paper 831532, Aerospace Congress & Exposition, Long Beach, CA: Society of Automotive Engineers. During the early 1980s, integrated "vertical-situation" and "horizontal-situation" displays were being developed for commercial aircraft to replace multiple electro-mechanical instruments. Integrated situation displays combined the information from several instruments enabling more efficient access to critical flight parameters, thereby improving situational awareness and reducing pilot workload.
The term was first defined formally by Endsley in 1988.Endsley, M. R. (1988). Design and evaluation for situation awareness enhancement. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual Meeting (pp. 97-101). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors Society. Before being widely adopted by human factors scientists in the 1990s, the term is said to have been used by United States Air Force (USAF) fighter aircrew returning from war in Korea and Vietnam. They identified having good situation awareness as the decisive factor in air combat engagements—the "ace factor".Spick, M. (1988). The Ace Factor: Air Combat and the Role of Situational Awareness. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press. Survival in a dogfight was typically a matter of observing the opponent's current move and anticipating his next move a fraction of a second before he could observe and anticipate it himself.
USAF pilots also came to equate situational awareness with the "observe" and "orient" phases of the famous observe-orient-decide-act loop (OODA loop), or Boyd cycle, as described by the USAF war theorist Col. John Boyd. In combat, the winning strategy is to "get inside" your opponent's OODA loop, not just by making one's own decisions quicker, but also by having better situation awareness than one's opponent, and even changing the situation in ways that the opponent cannot monitor or even comprehend. Losing one's own situation awareness, in contrast, equates to being "out of the loop".
Clearly, situational awareness has far-reaching applications, as it is necessary for individuals and teams to function effectively in their environment. Thus, situational awareness has gone far beyond the field of aviation to work being conducted in a wide variety of environments. Situation awareness is being studied in such diverse areas as air traffic control, nuclear power plant operation, emergency response, maritime operations, space, oil and gas drilling, vehicle operation, and health care (e.g. anesthesiology and nursing).Collier, S.G. & Follesf, K. (1995). SACRI: A measure of situation awareness for nuclear power plant control rooms. Proceedings of an International Conference: Experimental Analysis and Measurement of Situation Awareness (pp. 115–122). Daytona Beach, FL.Bolstad, C.A. (2000). Age-related factors affecting the perception of essential information during risky driving situations. Paper presented at the Human Performance Situation Awareness and Automation: User-Centered Design for the New Millennium Conference, Savannah, GA.Sollenberger, R.L., & Stein, E.S. (1995). A simulation study of air traffic controllers' situation awareness. Proceedings of an International Conference: Experimental Analysis and Measurement of Situation Awareness (pp. 211–217). Daytona Beach, FL.
Theoretical model
Endsley's Cognitive Model of SA
The most widely cited and accepted model of SA was developed by Dr. Mica Endsley, which has been shown to be largely supported by research findings.Wickens, C. D. (2008). Situation awareness: Review of Mica Endsley's 1995 articles on situation awareness theory and measurement. Human Factors, 50(3), 397-403. Lee, Cassano-Pinche, and Vicente found that Endsley's Model of SA received 50% more citations following its publication than any other paper in Human Factors compared to other papers in the 30-year period of their review.Lee, J. D., Cassano-Pinche´, A., & Vicente, K. J. (2005). Biometric analysis of Human Factors (1970-2000): A quantitative description of scientific impact. Human Factors, 47(4), 753-766.
Endsley's model describes the cognitive processes and mechanisms that are used by people to assess situations to develop SA, and the task and environmental factors that also affect their ability to get SA. It describes in detail the three levels of SA formation: perception, comprehension, and projection.
Perception (Level 1 SA): The first step in achieving SA is to perceive the status, attributes, and dynamics of relevant elements in the environment. Thus, Level 1 SA, the most basic level of SA, involves the processes of monitoring, cue detection, and simple recognition, which lead to an awareness of multiple situational elements (objects, events, people, systems, environmental factors) and their current states (locations, conditions, modes, actions).
Comprehension (Level 2 SA): The next step in SA formation involves a synthesis of disjointed Level 1 SA elements through the processes of pattern recognition, interpretation, and evaluation. Level 2 SA requires integrating this information to understand how it will impact upon the individual's goals and objectives. This includes developing a comprehensive picture of the world, or of that portion of the world of concern to the individual.
Projection (Level 3 SA): The third and highest level of SA involves the ability to project the future actions of the elements in the environment. Level 3 SA is achieved through knowledge of the status and dynamics of the elements and comprehension of the situation (Levels 1 and 2 SA), and then extrapolating this information forward in time to determine how it will affect future states of the operational environment.
Endsley's model shows how SA "provides the primary basis for subsequent decision making and performance in the operation of complex, dynamic systems". Although alone it cannot guarantee successful decision making, SA does support the necessary input processes (e.g., cue recognition, situation assessment, prediction) upon which good decisions are based.