Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the understanding of an environment, its elements, and how it changes with respect to time or other factors. Situational awareness is important for effective decision making in many environments. It is formally defined as:
“the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future”.
An alternative definition is that situation awareness is adaptive, externally-directed consciousness that has as its products knowledge about a dynamic task environment and directed action within that environment.
Situation awareness has been recognized as a critical foundation for successful decision-making across a broad range of situations, many of which involve the protection of human life and property, including law enforcement, aviation, air traffic control, ship navigation, health care, emergency response, military command and control operations, transmission system operators, self defense, and offshore oil and nuclear power plant management.
Inadequate situation awareness has been identified as one of the primary causal factors in accidents attributed to human error. According to Endsley’s situation awareness theory, when someone meets a dangerous situation, he needs an appropriate and a precise decision-making process which include pattern recognition and matching, formation of sophisticated schemata and archetypal knowledge that aids correct decision making.
The formal definition of SA is often described as three ascending levels:
Perception of the elements in the environment,
Comprehension or understanding of the situation, and
Projection of future status.
People with the highest levels of SA have not only perceived the relevant information for their goals and decisions, but are also able to integrate that information to understand its meaning or significance, and are able to project likely or possible future scenarios. These higher levels of SA are critical for proactive decision making in demanding environments.
Three facets of SA have been the focus in research: SA states, SA systems, and SA processes. SA states refers to the actual level of awareness people have of the situation. SA systems refers to technologies that are developed to support SA in many environments. SA processes refers to the updating of SA states, and what guides the moment-to-moment change of SA.
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