Situational Awareness

Situational Awareness or situation awareness is the understanding of an environment, its elements, and how it changes with respect to time or other factors. Situational awareness is important for effective decision making in many environments.

There are four main characteristics of situational awareness including observation, orientation, decision, and action. Observation involves constantly monitoring the people and actions taking place around you. Situational awareness is not something a person is born with. It is a skill that is developed through repetition, focus, and consistent use of hazard analysis. Simply put, situational awareness is knowing what is going on around you.

Situational assessment

In brief, situation awareness (SA) is viewed as "a state of knowledge," and situational assessment as "the processes" used to achieve that knowledge. The most widely cited and accepted model of SA was developed by Dr. Mica Endsley, argues that "it is important to distinguish the term situation awareness, as a state of knowledge, from the processes used to achieve that state. These processes, which may vary widely among individuals and contexts, will be referred to as situational assessment or the process of achieving, acquiring, or maintaining SA." Note that SA is not only produced by the processes of situational assessment, it also drives those same processes in a recurrent fashion. For example, one's current awareness can determine what one pays attention to next and how one interprets the information perceived.