Situation Awareness (SA), a Qualitative User-Centered Information Needs Assessment Approach

Abstract

In order to keep the human professional in charge and to enable him/her to solve meaningful problems in a manner that is as natural as possible, new approaches that are more user-oriented should be used to augment human capabilities. Situation Awareness (SA) improves decision-making and performance in complex, dynamic environment by enhancing ambient awareness of the system-user. Situation Awareness is a qualitative user-centered information needs assessment approach that provides a better conceptual map of information requirement which have the potential to ultimately lead to the development of Information Technological (IT) tools for SA enhancement. Until now, SA has not been considered as a potential method of improving the cognitive decision-making process within the Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Owner (AECO) domain. The objective of this study is to apply the qualitative SA approach to the AECO-related practices and investigate its benefits and challenges in such a domain. Developing construction management methods and support systems that center on SA requirements can improve managers’ decision-making processes. This study applies the Goal Directed Cognitive Task Analysis (GDTA) technique in two different areas of AECO, construction safety and facility management, in order to obtain the key goals and SA requirements of performing their tasks. As the result of the GDTA methodology, a hierarchy of goals, sub-goals, decisions and information required for achieving the goals has been provided for each of the said areas. An IT tool that was built based on the SA-based outcome of the Facility Management pilot application has also been discussed in the paper. These SA requirements lay the foundation for future role-based decision support systems that can assist AECO personnel in their decision making process within dynamic and information-rich environments throughout the life cycle of a facility from the construction to the operations phase.