SITUATION AWARENESS

Abstract

Situation awareness (SA), a person's understanding of what is happening in the current situation, is critical for performance in a wide variety of domains, including aviation, air traffic control, driving, military operations, emergency management, health care, and power grid operations. This chapter discusses SA in teams, and the factors that underlie the development of team SA which significantly affects performance in many settings. Alternating between "goal driven" and "data driven" is characteristic of human information processing that underpins much of SA development in complex worlds. Interactive SA trainer attempts to bootstrap the natural process by exposing the trainee to many, many situations in a very short period of time using computer-based training tools. The chapter concludes with a discussion of validated techniques for measuring situation awareness in individuals and teams that can be used to evaluate new system designs and training programs, and to conduct further research on this important construct.