1. Michelle Hester Advanced Human Factors (PSYC 562)
Situation Awareness
Michelle Hester
Advanced Human Factors (PSYC 562)

2. Articles
Towards a Theory of Situation Awareness in Dynamic Systems – Mica R. Endsley
Measurements of Situation Awareness in Dynamic systems – Mica R. Endsley
Situation Awareness: Review of Mica Endsley’s 1995 Articles on Situation Awareness Theory and Measurement – Christopher D Wickens
Sources of Situation Awareness Errors in Aviation – Debra Jones and Mica R. Endsley

3. Introduction
Goal of Endsley’s Towards a Theory of Situation Awareness in Dynamic Systems
Importance of SA in decision making
Expand prior work in the area
Importance in Human Factors:
Aircraft
Air Traffic Control
Large System Operations
Tactical and Strategic Systems
Others

4. Definitions Situation Awareness
“Situation awareness is 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.”
Situation Assessment
“The process used to achieve situation awareness.”

5. Levels of Situation Awareness
Level 1: Perception
Perception of elements in the environment
What is happening?
Level 2: Comprehension
Comprehension of the current situation
Why is it happening? What does it mean?
Level 3: Projection
Projection of future status
What will happen next?

6. Situation Awareness and Teams

7. Human Properties Affecting SA
Preattentive Processing
Attention
Perception
Working Memory
Long-Term Memory
Automaticity
Goals

8. Task and System Factors
System Design
Interface Design
Stress
Workload
Complexity
Automation

9. Measurements of SA Physiological Techniques Performance Measures
Eye tracking
Performance Measures
Global measures
External task measures
Imbedded task measures
Subjective Techniques
Self-rating
Observer-rating
Questionnaires
Posttest
On-line
Freeze techniques

10. Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique
Experiment 1
Simulation of air-to-air engagement
12 experienced military fighter pilots
Two (blue team) v. 4 (red team)
Simulation frozen at random to collect SAGAT data
Participants answer all question randomly before preceding
Experiment 2
25 experienced military fighter pilots
Similar to Experiment 1
Trials resumed after freeze following a specified period for collecting data
Participants answered as many questions as they could in the given time
SAGAT supported by experiments, subjects were able to report their SA using technique without memory decay and freeze did not intrude upon performance

12. Sources of Error Methods: Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS)
Cases between Jan
Classified errors into different levels
Results:
76% - level 1 SA
20.3% - level 2 SA
3.4% - level 3 SA
Level 1 is the dominant source of SA errors in aviation