Team Situation Awareness Research Articles

Exploring Measures of Team Knowledge

Team cognition is more than the aggregate cognition of team members. It is an emerging feature, worthy of study in its own right. In this paper we investigate potential metrics of team knowledge in the context of a broader exploratory study on measures of team knowledge, performance, and situation awareness. Team members assumed different roles in a three-person synthetic task in which they were presented with unique role-relevant information. Successful accomplishment of team objectives required team members to share information. The focus of this paper is on one of several measures collected which required judgments of pairwise relatedness ratings for mission-relevant terms. These data were submitted to Pathfinder network scaling and used to derive three metrics of team knowledge: knowledge accuracy, interpositional knowledge, and knowledge similarity. The metrics revealed different perspectives on team knowledge and were generally predictive of team performance and team situation awareness.

Supporting Situation Awareness of Individuals and Teams Using Group View Displays

This paper describes a project to design and test a large wall-mounted group view display intended to support situation awareness of individuals and multi-person teams in an advanced power plant control room. The design process began with an analysis of the requirements for situation awareness of individuals and teams to establish the design basis. A function-based cognitive task analysis was then used to define the plant state information to be included in the group view display. A phased test program was then initiated to establish the adequacy of the design concept. The first study employed sequences of static displays representing “snapshots” of evolving normal and emergency events. The second study tested dynamic group view displays (three 100 inch wall mounted displays) driven by a high-fidelity plant simulation. The study compared operator performance with the function-based group view display to operator performance using a more traditional physical mimic overview display. Dependent measures included (1) objective measures of performance, (2) operator ratings of the displays, and (3) workload measures. The measures provided statistically significant, converging evidence of the superiority of the function-based group view display. The implication of the results for design of group view displays to support individuals and teams are discussed.

Team situation awareness for process control safety and performance

AbstractThis paper defines situation awareness (SA) and discusses its importance to operator‐machine system safety and functioning in the context of process control activities. Specifically, identified are relationships of human detection of critical process cues converying the status of automated control systems and operator interpretation of the meaning and relevance of such information to the potential for negative incidents in chemical processing. Beyond individual operator SA in interacting with control systems, intra‐ and inter‐ work team SA are discussed for supporting individual attainment of process control responsibilities. Factors critical to team SA are discussed. “Road blocks” to team SA are also analytically examined. Lastly, methods for assessing individual and team SA are reviewed and vehicles for relating outcomes of these methods to changes in process control operator and team behavior to improve human‐machine system safety and performance are relayed.

Broadening the Measurement of Situation Awareness through Cognitive Engineering Methods

Situation awareness (SA) and team SA are popular concepts, yet vaguely defined and inadequately measured. They involve representations of the current situation, performance resulting from those representations, and cognitive structures and processes leading to those representations. Current measures of individual and team SA focus on the assessment of performance or the accuracy of the resulting situation model at the expense of other aspects of SA, such as situation assessment, mental models, and team process behaviors. As a result, these measures fail to capture the richness of the constructs of individual and team SA, critical for applications involving training and team SA. We propose that a cognitive engineering approach to measuring SA which focuses on the elicitation of the cognition underlying SA, can extend measurement by overcoming many of the current limits. As an illustration, the measurement of situation models using this approach is presented.

Development of a Situation Awareness Training Program for Aviation Maintenance

Training to improve situation awareness has become a topic of concern, particularly in safety critical areas such as aviation. This paper describes a training program designed to enhance situation awareness across the multiple, distributed teams found in aircraft maintenance. Problems with poor situation awareness in aircraft maintenance and gaps in situation awareness across the multiple teams engaged in this process have been linked to aircraft accidents, damage and inefficiencies in airline operations. The training program was developed based on an instructional systems design model. A front-end analysis was conducted which resulted in a determination of instructional objectives and goals. Five concepts for training to improve team SA were specified and developed into a deliverable training program: Shared mental models, verbalization of decisions, shift meetings and teamwork, provision of feedback, and individual SA training. The instructional design process used and the Team SA Training Program developed for this domain will be discussed.

Team Situation Awareness in Aviation Maintenance

To assess team situation awareness in an aviation maintenance setting, a methodology was developed for examining situation awareness requirements that incorporates both individual and team situation awareness perspectives. In the present study, inquires were conducted in the field maintenance setting at a major airline. Contextual inquires were combined with a goal directed task analysis to specify the situation awareness requirements involved in each of the interactions (between and within teams) required to perform maintenance tasks. Situation awareness requirements in a team context are discussed along with recommendations for training programs directed at improving situation awareness with and between teams.

Situation Awareness in Team Performance: Implications for Measurement and Training

Situation awareness has long been recognized as an important variable in aviation performance. Research to date has focused on identifying characteristics of situation awareness for individuals, not on the behaviors and processes associated with team situation awareness. The purpose of this review is to delineate and identify characteristics of team situation awareness. In addition, implications are discussed and research questions are outlined that target the measurement and training of situation awareness in teams.