What is Situational Awareness?
According to Wikipedia, Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status.
It has 3 parts:
- perception of the elements in the environment
- comprehension of the situation
- projection or prediction of future status.
Three facets of SA have been in focus in research:
- SA states
- SA systems
- SA processes.
SA states refer to the actual awareness of the situation.
SA systems refer to the distribution of SA in teams and between objects in the environment, and to the exchange of SA between system parts.
SA processes refer to the updating of SA states, and what guides the moment-to-moment change of SA.
On the most basic level, situational awareness is about knowing what is going on in the environment and its implications for the present and the future
Why Situational awareness matter?
Human error a natural part of organizational life.
In a safe environment, errors can be a source of inspiration, a driver of learning, and even a spark for innovation.
However, in many situations, human errors do more harm than good and should thus be reduced to a minimum or completely avoided at all.
This especially applies to healthcare, aviation, and other high-risk sectors where errors can have severe consequences.
What are the benefits of having good situational awareness?
According to a study by CQ Net, a key prerequisite of situational awareness is proper communication and information exchange.
Why is situational awareness important in our project?
Many drivers and commuters, mainly who are tourists use navigational aid to reach their destinations.
But the issue in this scenario is that, due to the constant attention that is needed to be given to navigational aid such as Mobile GPS, earpiece, etc, they can instantly lose their situational awareness.
Losing situational awareness can cause serious trouble while driving and can even lead to many major accidents.