Situational Awareness – Defining Situational Awareness

Situational awareness is having an accurate understanding of our surroundings:

Where we are, what happened, what is happening, what is changing and what could happen.

Consider the following questions:

• Who does Situational Awareness apply to within our operation?
• What is your understanding of situational awareness?
• When is it required?
  • Is it required at changing levels?

• Did Mater (the truck) have awareness of what the wasabi (pistachio ice cream) was?
• Was he aware that it would be hot?
• Was he aware of what the consequences would be?

Fundamentally, Situational Awareness is:

“Knowing what is going on around you”

It consists of three key stages:

• Perception of elements in the environment within a volume of time and space
• Comprehension of their meaning
• Projection of their status into the near future

Good situational awareness requires:

• Gathering data (sensing, perception), seeking cues in the environment
• Assembling information to give understanding (comprehension)
• Thinking ahead (projection)

Hence when layers of perception, comprehension or projection are diminished, SA is understood to be partially or fully lost:

• Level 1: Perception must be achieved first
• Level 2: Comprehension follows Perception
• Level 3: Projection is the final component of SA to deliver safe outcomes

Gaining Perception

All our senses are working all the time. If an input to the sense stops changing then we stop paying attention to it.

Consider your senses:

• Temperature
• Smell
• Sound

How we Perceive

• If we don’t attend to a sensory input then from the perspective of our brain, it never happened.
  • You need to observe the change to register it.
• Working Memory / Short term memory can store 7 items ±2.
• When we start doing something for the first time its starts out as little chunk of knowledge, the more we practice it the larger the chunks of information become.
  • Part of long term memory is Muscle memory, storing motor actions (e.g. doing a maths equation)
• Use the example of when you first learned to drive or learnt a new skill e.g. riding a bike,
  • Initially it required a lot of effort.
  • Progressed into a more complete skill set.
• Working memory / Short term memory can be affected by Stress or other physiological factors.
  • Example: a large auditorium or stadium with only a single working entrance. There’s a large crowd outside (sensory information) and lots of seats inside (huge LTM capacity) but only one person gets in at a time (attention limitation).

Understanding our Limitations

A key point of perception was mentioned earlier with Human Factors:

Human vision

We need to have a healthy respect that our perception may not be correct. Consider the following visual illusions…

• What do you see on the left?
• A vase or two faces?

• Which line is longer?
• The left or the right?

• Are the circles / wheels moving?

• Which way is the train moving?
• Does it change direction if you look at the tunnel, or the right hand side of the screen?

In the second stage of Situational Awareness, Comprehension, we compare our perceptions to our store of experience and knowledge to try and develop understanding and meaning.

Consider the following:

• How do you comprehend turbulence?
• What about your instructor?

Perception is similar, but comprehension will be different depending on experience, expectation and point of view.

We are trying to create our ‘Mental Model’ of the situation based on external and internal cues and experiences. The idea is to create a mental model that meshes external cues with internal experiences, creating a perfect fit.

Be aware of the differences between “reality” and “our perception of what we think is reality” which can cloud our comprehension of what is actually happening.

The third stage, projection, is all about thinking ahead and the only way you can accurately project your comprehended perceptions is with accurate data gathering.

The more accurate your data the more accurate your projection will be.

Accurate projection requires that you are continually checking your mental model to confirm that you are still using the correct one in a dynamic situation.

So, the outside environment (pink) might change, but your mental model hasn’t changed. There is a misfit. Recognise that, so you can change your mental model to match the new real-world situation.

Example

Consider the scenario that you’ve just woken early, before sunrise, on your day off to go out…

• How could you determine what to wear for the day?
• Its actually going to be a warm 34℃ today…
• Which person has projected correctly?

So, how was the flight crew’s situational awareness?

• Perception?
  • Crew perceived the performance limitations…
  • How do we know this?
  • Did they?
• Comprehension?
  • Crew implemented appropriate techniques…
• Projection?
  • What appears to be missing?
  • Projection of the climb performance after take off …
  • Given the weight, the temperature, the elevation etc.

Our Experiences

What are other examples where hindsight identified errors in perception, comprehension and projection?

• What about in our operation?
• Does SA improve with experience?

Embraier Jet taking off at Birmingham airport 23 February 2017 (41 knots crosswind)

Considering the above video (especially at times: 1:22, 2:44, 5:00):

• Perception?
  • Crew perceived there was a crosswind.
• Comprehension?
  • Crew comprehended they needed to get away from the ground quickly to minimise effect of crosswind
• Projection?
  • Crew did not project how close the tail would get to a tailstrike by rotating quickly

Could this Happen in our Operation?

Another discussion incident: Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 (https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5772710/ab-2017-036-final.pdf)

This investigation led to Singapore Airlines changing procedures where MTOP is set during take-offs in gusty conditions to reduce time on the runway and exposure to a reduction in speed due to a rapid reduction in wind.