Distributed Situation Awareness: Theory, Measurement and Application to Teamwork (Human Factors in Defence)

Having an accurate understanding of what is going on is a key commodity for teams working within military systems. 'Situation awareness' (SA) is the term that is used within human factors circles to describe the level of awareness that operators have of the situation that they are engaged in; it focuses on how operators develop and maintain a sufficient understanding of 'what is going on' in order to achieve success in task performance. Over the past two decades, the construct has become a fundamental theme within the areas of system design and evaluation and has received considerable attention from the human factors research community. Despite this, there is still considerable debate over how SA operates in complex collaborative systems and how SA achievement and maintenance is best supported through system, procedure and interface design. This book focuses on the recently developed concept of distributed situation awareness, which takes a systems perspective on the concept and moves the focus on situation awareness out of the heads of individual operators and on to the overall joint cognitive system consisting of human and technological agents. Situation awareness is viewed as an emergent property of collaborative systems, something that resides in the interaction between elements of the system and not in the heads of individual operators working in that system. The first part of the book presents a comprehensive review and critique of existing SA theory and measurement approaches, following which a novel model for complex collaborative systems, the distributed SA model, and a new modelling procedure, the propositional network approach, are outlined and demonstrated. The next part focuses on real-world applications of the model and modelling procedure, and presents four case studies undertaken in the land warfare, multinational warfare and energy distribution domains. Each case study is described in terms of the domain in question, the methodology employed, and the findings derived in relation to situation awareness theory. The third and final part of the book then concentrates on theoretical development, and uses the academic literature and the findings from the case study applications to validate and extend the distributed SA model described at the beginning of the book. In closing, the utility of the distributed SA model and modeling procedure are outlined and a series of initial guidelines for supporting distributed SA through system design are articulated. Contents 6 List of Figures 10 List of Tables 14 Acknowledgements 16 About the Authors 18 Commonly Used Analysis Acronyms and Initialisms 20 1 Introduction 22 Introduction 22 Research Activities Undertaken 23 Structure of the Book 23 2 What Really Is Going On? Situation Awareness Literature Review 28 Introduction 28 Situation Awareness 28 Individual Models of Situation Awareness 30 Situation Awareness in Collaborative Systems 41 Summary of Collaborative SA Models 48 A Note on Similarities with Other Concepts 51 Conclusions 52 3 How Do We Know What They Know? Situation Awareness Measurement Methods Review 56 Introduction 56 Situation Awareness Measurement 56 Situation Awareness Methods Review 59 Conclusions 74 Recommendations 77 4 Distributed Situation Awareness: A New View on Situation Awareness in Collaborative Environments and its Measurement 78 Introduction 78 Distributed Situation Awareness 78 Representing Distributed Situation Awareness 81 Distributed Situation Awareness Example 86 Comparison with Existing Models and Measurement Approaches 90 Summary 92 5 Distributed Situation Awareness in the Real World: A Case Study in the Energy Distribution Domain 94 Introduction 94 Energy Distribution Case Study 94 Methodology 97 Results 98 Discussion 104 6 Distributed Situation Awareness and Network Enabled Capability Systems: Multi National Experiment 4 112 Introduction 112 Network Enabled Capability 113 Multi National Experiment 4 115 Methodology 116 Results and Discussion 119 Conclusions 130 7 Out with the Old and In with the New: A Comparison of Distributed Situation Awareness Using Analogue and Digital Mission Planning Systems 136 Introduction 136 Digital Planning Systems 136 The Study 143 Methodology 143 Results 144 Comparison of the Old and New Planning Processes: The Digital System versus Paper Maps 154 Discussion 158 8 Is it Really Better to Share? Analysis of a New Digital Mission Support System and Implications for System Design 162 Introduction 162 Land Warfare Mission Planning and Execution and Distributed Situation Awareness 163 Digital System Distributed Situation Awareness Assessment 165 Methodology 166 Results 168 Discussion 189 9 A Model of Distributed Situation Awareness in Complex Collaborative Environments 204 Introduction 204 Distributed Situation Awareness Model 204 DSA Mechanisms: Schema Theory, the Perceptual Cycle, Compatible SA and SATransactions 206 Schema Theory and SA 206 Neisser’s Perceptual Cycle 209 Compatible Situation Awareness 211 Situation Awareness Transactions 213 Compatible Situation Awareness and Situation Awareness Transactions Example 214 Factors Affecting DSA 221 Summary 225 10 Conclusions for Distributed Situation Awareness Theory, Measurement and Teamwork 228 Introduction 228 What was Found? 228 Is the Distributed Situation Awareness Approach Useful for the Analysis and Design of Collaborative Systems? 230 What are the Main Differences between the Distributed Situation Awareness Approach and the Shared Situation Awareness Approach? 231 What are the Implications of the Distributed Situation Awareness Approach? 234 Measuring Situation Awareness in Collaborative Systems 236 Distributed Situation Awareness and System Design 237 Areas for Future Research 244 Closing Remarks 246 References 248 Index 260 9780754670582,0754670589 Ashgate This book presents an exhaustive review and evaluation of contemporary theoretical perspectives on SA and of a range of SA measurement approaches. A novel theory of DSA in complex sociotechnical systems is presented, followed by an original methodology for assessing SA and DSA in command and control environments. It contains several naturalistic case studies of command and control scenarios undertaken in numerous military domains, as well as one involving multiple high-consequence civilian domains