Situation awareness measurement: A review of applicability for C4i environments

The construct of situation awareness (SA) has become a core theme within the human factors (HF) research community. Consequently, there have been numerous attempts to develop reliable and valid measures of SA but there is a lack of techniques developed specifically for the assessment of SA in command, control, communication, computers and intelligence (C4i) environments. During the design, development and evaluation of novel systems, technology and procedures, valid and reliable situation awareness measurement techniques are required for the assessment of individual and team SA, in order to determine the improvements (or in some cases decrements) resulting from proposed design and technological interventions. The paper presents a review of existing situation awareness measurement techniques for their suitability for use in the assessment of SA in C4i environments. Seventeen SA measures were evaluated against a set of HF methods criteria. It was concluded that current SA measurement techniques are inadequate by themselves for use in the assessment of SA in C4i environments, and a multiple-measure approach utilising different approaches is recommended

Situational awareness and safety

This paper considers the applicability of situation awareness concepts to safety in the control of complex systems. Much of the research to date has been conducted in aviation, which has obvious safety implications. It is argued that the concepts could be extended to other safety critical domains. The paper presents three theories of situational awareness: the three-level model, the interactive sub-systems approach, and the perceptual cycle. The difference between these theories is the extent to which they emphasise process or product as indicative of situational awareness. Some data from other studies are discussed to consider the negative effects of losing situational awareness, as this has serious safety implications. Finally, the application of situational awareness to system design, and training are presented

Shipboard Crisis Management: A Case Study.

The loss of the "Green Lily" in 1997 is used as a case study to highlight the characteristics of escalating crises. As in similar safety critical industries, these situations are unpredictable events that may require co-ordinated but flexible and creative responses from individuals and teams working in stressful conditions. Fundamental skill requirements for crisis management are situational awareness and decision making. This paper reviews the naturalistic decision making (NDM) model for insights into the nature of these skills and considers the optimal training regimes to cultivate them. The paper concludes with a review of the issues regarding the assessment of crisis management skills and current research into the determination of behavioural markers for measuring competence

Report of the workshop on Aviation Safety/Automation Program

As part of NASA's responsibility to encourage and facilitate active exchange of information and ideas among members of the aviation community, an Aviation Safety/Automation workshop was organized and sponsored by the Flight Management Division of NASA Langley Research Center. The one-day workshop was held on October 10, 1989, at the Sheraton Beach Inn and Conference Center in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Participants were invited from industry, government, and universities to discuss critical questions and issues concerning the rapid introduction and utilization of advanced computer-based technology into the flight deck and air traffic controller workstation environments. The workshop was attended by approximately 30 discipline experts, automation and human factors researchers, and research and development managers. The goal of the workshop was to address major issues identified by the NASA Aviation Safety/Automation Program. Here, the results of the workshop are documented. The ideas, thoughts, and concepts were developed by the workshop participants. The findings, however, have been synthesized into a final report primarily by the NASA researchers

A survey of simulation techniques in commerce and defence

Despite the developments in Modelling and Simulation (M&S) tools and techniques over the past years, there has been a gap in the M&S research and practice in healthcare on developing a toolkit to assist the modellers and simulation practitioners with selecting an appropriate set of techniques. This study is a preliminary step towards this goal. This paper presents some results from a systematic literature survey on applications of M&S in the commerce and defence domains that could inspire some improvements in the healthcare. Interim results show that in the commercial sector Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) has been the most widely used technique with System Dynamics (SD) in second place. However in the defence sector, SD has gained relatively more attention. SD has been found quite useful for qualitative and soft factors analysis. From both the surveys it becomes clear that there is a growing trend towards using hybrid M&S approaches

The future of UAS: standards, regulations, and operational experiences [workshop report]

This paper presents the outcomes of "The Future of UAS: Standards, Regulations and Operational Experiences" workshop, held on the 7th and 8th of December, 2006 in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. The goal of the workshop was to identify recent international activities in the Unmanned Airborne Systems (UAS) airspace integration problem. The workshop attracted a broad cross-section of the UAS community, including: airspace and safety regulators, developers, operators and researchers. The three themes of discussion were: progress in the development of standards and regulations, lessons learnt from recent operations, and advances in new technologies. This paper summarises the activities of the workshop and explores the important outcomes and trends as perceived by the authors

Measuring situation awareness in complex systems: Comparison of measures study

Situation Awareness (SA) is a distinct critical commodity for teams working in complex industrial systems and its measurement is a key provision in system, procedural and training design efforts. This article describes a study that was undertaken in order to compare three different SA measures (a freeze probe recall approach, a post trial subjective rating approach and a critical incident interview technique) when used to assess participant SA during a military planning task. The results indicate that only the freeze probe recall method produced a statistically significant correlation with performance on the planning task and also that there was no significant correlation between the three methods, which suggests that they were effectively measuring different things during the trials. In conclusion, the findings, whilst raising doubts over the validity of post trial subjective rating and interview-based approaches, offer validation evidence for the use of freeze probe recall approaches to measure SA. The findings are subsequently discussed with regard to their implications for the future measurement of SA in complex collaborative systems