Distributed situation awareness: From awareness in individuals and teams to the awareness of technologies, sociotechnical systems, and societies

Abstract

A large component of Neville Stanton's work has focused on situation awareness in domains such as defence, transport, and process control. A significant contribution has been to initiate a shift from considering individual human operator situation awareness to considering the situation awareness of human and non-human teams, organisations, and even sociotechnical systems. Though controversial when introduced, the distributed situation awareness model has become increasingly relevant for modern day systems and problems. In this article we reflect on Stanton's contribution and point to a pressing need to consider a. The situation awareness of advanced technologies, and b. situation awareness at a sociotechnical system, societal and even global level. This is demonstrated via discussion on two contemporaneous issues: automated vehicles and the COVID-19 pandemic. It is concluded that, given advances such as artificial intelligence, the increased connectedness of society, emerging issues such as disinformation, and an increasing set of global threats, Stanton's distributed situation awareness model and associated analysis framework provide a useful toolkit for future Human Factors and Ergonomics applications.