Talk:Situation awareness/Archive 1

Situation awareness
Situation awareness (SA) is important for effective decision making and performance in many domains, including aviation, nuclear power, chemical processing, automobiles, air traffic control, medical and health systems, teleoperations, trains, space operations, maintenance, and advanced manufacturing systems. In these complex and dynamic environments, human decision making is highly dependent on SA — a constantly evolving picture of the state of the environment. Situation awareness can be described broadly as a person’s state of knowledge or mental model of the situation around him or her.

A general, widely applicable definition describes SA 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” (Endsley, 1988). SA involves perceiving critical factors in the environment (Level 1 SA), understanding what those factors mean, particularly when integrated together in relation to the decision maker’s goals (Level 2), and at the highest level, an understanding of what will happen with the system in the near future (Level 3). These higher levels of SA allow people to function in a timely and effective manner.

An individual's understanding and classification of the situation he or she is in forms the basis for all subsequent decision making and performance. Even the best trained people will perform poorly if their SA is incorrect. One study of aircraft accidents found that as much as 88% of all accidents attributed to human error had an underlying problem with SA (Endsley, 1995). Other studies have found that a similarly high percentage of human error problems stem from poor situation awareness, which often results from deficiencies in the system capabilities or displays provided to their operators.

In addition, people can vary significantly in the degree to which they are able to develop and maintain SA in a given situation. Factors contributing to these differences include experience (which helps to build up relevant memory stores for pattern matching to incoming information), and individual cognitive abilities (including factors such as attention sharing ability, spatial abilities, pattern matching ability, perceptual speed, and working memory). Training programs can be used to help people develop better SA by helping to build relevant skills (including communications skills, scan patterns, and contingency planning) and by helping to build a large repetoire of relevant memory stores. (Endsley, 1995)

Endsley, M. R. (1988). Design and evaluation for situation awareness enhancement. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 32nd Annual  Meeting,Human Factors Society, Santa Monica, CA,  97-101.

Endsley, M. R. (1995). A taxonomy of situation awareness errors. In R. Fuller, N. Johnston & N. McDonald (Eds.), Human factors in aviation operations (pp. 287-292). Aldershot, England: Avebury Aviation, Ashgate Publishing Ltd.

Endsley, M. R. (1995). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors, 37(1), 32-64.

Could someone confirm how the "levels" come about? Are they built up over time, or as a result of stress and external factors, or are they down to the individual's training and cognition of the situation?

Krang 15:27, 9 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Krang, The levels are defined in the research quoted above, basically as axioms so that metrics can be derived to evaluate various tools' ability to improve situation awareness. An individual's current awareness of a particular situation evolves as a result of many factors, including those you mention.  I think that SA moves through the 3 levels in a straightforward way: when you get good enough at level 1, you start being able to work on level 2.  That is, lower levels are prerequisites for higher levels.


 * Dan100, all the research quotes this as "situation awareness", yet this page was redirected from that title to the current "situational awareness." We're talking about awareness of the situation, not awareness that is conditioned on one's situation (like situational ethics).  Shouldn't this whole page be moved back to "Situation Awareness" and the redirect go from here to there?  If not, maybe a small paragraph describing the reasoning should be included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.160.51.71 (talk) 14:47, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Original research?
It appears that this article is lifted wholesale from a text. The references are there, but they seem lifted from another source or sources and they seem to lack broad sourcing. 842U (talk) 12:20, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Situation Awareness
The information regarding situation awareness has failed the test of parsimony. It could be that it is time to stand back and view the forest.

Situational awareness has been a preoccupation of performance improvement mthodologies for more than 2000 years (that we know of). It has been viewed as the core and basis of full and effective functioning. Certainly those competencies show up as the outcomes we desire as in the Endsley (1988) definition, amongst others.

Consider, (holding both physiology and training constant) we know that SA is mostly affected by emotions, that it comes and goes according to the persons emotional preoccupation.

What this suggests to me is that SA is enabled or disabled by emotional states. Blocked by preoccupation. This seems a reasonable perspective as the historical training mechanisms focused on awareness development through either subsuming the self or and rigorous mental discipline to achieve the unfettered mental state where SA is at its highest.

The redirection of attention from external to internal foci under stress was suggested by Lazarus (1966) in his dichotomous Direct Action - Versus Intrapsychic coping styles theory. Could it be that SA is simply another manifestation of the shift in mental state and a function of coping style?.

When the articles says, "starting from scratch SA can be described variously as knowing and understanding what is going on around you and predicting how things will change," how is that a contribution? It seems to me to just recapitulate Endsley's definition in more general--and less precise--terms. [JVD]

One of the deepest logical critiques of "SA" is that it is unnecessary. The philosopher Daniel Dennett might call it "folk psychology," meaning that it is a repackaging of existing concepts under a new name, one that just happens to resonate with "the folk" within a given domain (e.g., the military). To Dennett, this is fine, as long as "the folk" clearly understand that a given term is being used as a proxy for a preexisting set of understandings. The problem with "SA" is that "the situation" in any given instance must be clearly defined, since a potentially infinite number of situations exist at any given time. However, once "the situation" is clearly defined, why call it "SA" and run the risk of conflicting with the multitude of other situations also being called "SA?"

A second, equally weighty critique states that "SA" can never truly be objectively defined. In the terminology of MacCorquodale and Meehl, it is a "hypothetical construct" that is being inappropriately elevated to the status of an "intervening variable". An example of an intervening variable is voltage, which can be directly measured by a voltmeter. No such "SA meter" exists, or is likely to ever exist. Yet, SA is widely touted as being objectively measurable, e.g., by paper-and-pencil testing. Of course, the same argument can be made of other concepts (e.g., IQ). The difference would be the extent of research which has gone into the latter, versus the former.PrairieOjibway (talk) 01:20, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Looks a good start
This looks like a good start except:
 * Remove "Digital Situation Awareness" since that's conjecture and rhetoric
 * The Wikipedia entry lacks any mention of cognitive memory and how memory relates to observation and decision making. Memory is an extensive part of Situational Awareness and yet it is not covered in the article
 * There are no examples of arenas within which Situational Awareness is employed offered in the article, it should look at how SA and SA training is employed when workers use chainsaws on public Federal lands -- or pick [b]some[/b] actual arena and expand upon how SA relates to that effort

The article should be retained, not removed. It's value-neutral enough once one removes the "Digital Situation Awareness" section which is undeniably tacked-on.

The article is informative but could be greatly improved. NotSoOldHippy (talk) 03:15, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * In the area of information security "Digital Situation Awareness" is recognised as a key component in the DDPRR model of information security as it relates to large systems. Thus the "Digital Situation Awareness" section should be expanded. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.64.114.221 (talk) 19:41, 5 September 2010 (UTC)


 * A new definition of SA from recent doctoral work has been included. This work is based on work of Jon Barwise and others. Apart from work in aviation domain (in-flight situation awareness), SA is widely employed in Disaster Management . The article (and list of references) is currently featuring the work of only few people in specific domain and therefore be updated with contribution of many other researchers in various other fields.  Vsorathia (talk) 09:54, 19 November 2010 (UTC)


 * In 2004 I was involved in the book A Cognitive Approach to Situation Awreness: Theory and Practice (Banbury and Tremblay; Ashgate). I see no mention of any of the critical articles in that book which appeared overall to take a far more balanced/equivocal view than the present article. I recall Banbury and Tremblay invoking Durso's idea that SA is nowhere, it is if it can be defined at all (like consciousness) an 'epiphenomenon' which follows the action/attention. This article seems more like one of Endsley's books (often criticised for the narrow engineering approach rather than psychologically underpinned) which assume that there clearly is a phenomenon 'SA' and then proceeding to show us the beautiful clothes the emperor is wearing, along with a lot of technical jargon for the way the angels dance on the head of the pin - circular reasoning is everywhere evident in the experiments 'we are looking for this pehnomenon SA so we design experiments that capture SA'. A look at A Cognitive Approach, and at philosophy of consciousness, may help in refining the article. My own phd was 'cognitive factors mediating SA' sometime after which I concluded that the best definition is: Zen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sapamm (talk • contribs) 19:32, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

distraction
I find the moving picture right of the beginning of the article very distracting while reading the text. Is there a way to interrupt the motion of the picture while reading the text?

88.75.187.68 (talk) 22:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Failure to be Aware
Another thing that the entry lacks is any example of the consequences of a failure for being aware of one's situation. An example would be a good way to broaden the subject for the WikiPedia entry to the point where students could equate the offered failure example to examples they develop for course work.

One issue that I would consider adding (if nobody objects) is a specific example of two failures to be situationally aware on the San Gabriel Mountains in August of 2010 in that a Fire Prevention Officer was attacked ( http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/08/us-forest-service-ranger-attacked-in-angeles-national-forest.html ) and (not well reported) another fire fighter who was directing vehicle traffic around a fire closure was deliberately run down by a driver.

Both instances were a failure to be situationally aware of what was going on around the people working in remote areas despite the formal training and experience they had acquired. When dealing with the flow and diversion of vehicle traffic, one must constantly be aware of everything in motion within a person's area of influence, both immediately and within a projected area of time.

Likewise with the FPO who was attacked, he was unaware of the need for vigulence and unaware of thd demeanor of the individual who attacked him. Both instances of failure to be situationally aware were potentially fatal and in the case of the first incident, the FPO periodically stopped breathing and had to be recessitated.

So again, the article should be retained but it is lacking a number of things which would make the article more useful. NotSoOldHippy (talk) 20:28, 27 August 2010 (UTC)


 * There was also a volunteer in the San Gabriel Mountains who was followed home by a "forest visitor" and assaulted outside of her home, she was not aware that she was being followed until the mental case assaulted her. Her training consisted of situational awareness but the mindset is such that being aware of one's surrounding begins when one gets at the job site, ends when one leaves the job site, which is not correct. Situational awareness is a 24-hour thing (or should be.) Damotclese (talk) 19:17, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Added Examples of Situation Awareness On The Job
I added section Examples of Situation Awareness On The Job which will hopefuly help in moving this article out of the stub classification. Damotclese (talk) 19:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Failures Of Situational Awareness Section?
What does everyone think about having a section that covers some examples of failures where situational awareness was not employed, situations where lack of being aware has led to injury or death? Damotclese (talk) 18:15, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Situational Awareness Data Link
Suggest this entry mentions SADL, and a new wikipedia entry on SADL is started. See EPLRS. 80.4.63.73 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 18:50, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Proposed changes to Cyber security threat operations
In the Cyber security threat operations section the word "we" is used which should be edited to change it so that the section matches the rest of the article, "we" is descriptive of a group of people and the section appears to have been lifted from a web site or text book and needs to be edited.

Does anyone want to do that or shall I? If nobody steps forward to edit that and make the text flow, I'll do it in a few days. Damotclese (talk) 16:19, 5 August 2014 (UTC)