Situational Awareness

CORE DEFINITION

Situation awareness (SA), also known as situational awareness, is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future after some variables (such as time or predetermined events) change. It is also a discipline that studies the impact of understanding elements in the environment on decision-making, applied in complex and dynamic domains, including aviation, air traffic control, maritime navigation, power plant operation, military command and control, emergency services such as firefighting and policing, as well as common complex activities such as driving a car or riding a bicycle. Situation awareness encompasses being aware of what is happening nearby, to understanding how information, events, and one's own actions will affect goals and objectives, including immediate and impending impacts. If someone has a proficient sense of situation awareness, they generally have a higher degree of knowledge about the inputs and outputs of the system, and can control variables, thus having an "intuition" about situations, people, and events. Lack of situation awareness or insufficient situation awareness has been identified as one of the major factors in human error accidents.