System State Awareness

Abstract

Situation Awareness is a popular concept used to assess human agents’ understanding of a system and any error that may occur due to poor understanding. However, the popular conception of situation awareness retains assumptions better suited for linear, controlled systems. When assessing complex systems, rife with non-linear, emergent behaviors, current models of situation awareness frequently place much of the burden of system failure onto the human agent. We contend that the traditional concept of a fully controlled system is not the best fit for a complex system with networked loci of control, especially during abnormal system states. Instead, we recommend an approach that focuses on agents’ adaptation to environmental cues. We discuss how the concept of situation awareness, when enmeshed in the assumption of linearity, insufficiently deals with extended cognition, reliability, adaptation, and system stability. We conclude that an approach focusing on System State Awareness (SSA), instead, facilitates the adaptation of system goals during off-normal system states. Thus, SSA provides the theoretical underpinning for design of distributed networked systems that improve human performance in complex environments.