Situational awareness: Encyclopedia II - Situational awareness - Levels of Situational awareness

Situational awareness - Levels of Situational awareness

A general, widely applicable definition describes situational awareness 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).

• Level 1 situational awareness involves perceiving critical factors in the environment
• Level 2 situational awareness understanding what those factors mean, particularly when integrated together in relation to the decision maker’s goals
• Level 3 situational awareness is the highest level, an understanding of what will happen with the system in the near future.

These higher levels of situational awareness 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 situational awareness is incorrect. One study of aircraft accidents found that as many as 88% of all accidents attributed to human error had an underlying problem with situational awareness (Endsley, 1995).

Other studies have found that a similarly high percentage of human error problems stem from poor situational awareness, which often results from deficiencies in the system capabilities or displays provided to their operators.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Levels of Situational awareness", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki