ABSTRACT

This chapter describes situation awareness as the cognitive processes for building and maintaining awareness of a workplace situation or event. It explores how the brain processes information and presents a model for understanding the stages of situation awareness. The chapter discusses influencing factors, the training, maintenance and assessment of situation awareness. It includes the importance of situation awareness in workplace safety. The chapter presents a basic model of the human brain’s information processing system to explain both the strengths and the limitations of human memory for both situation awareness and decision-making. A simplified view of memory proposes that there are three linked systems: sensory memory, short-term or working memory and long-term memory. Problems relating to situation awareness are commonly attributed as causes of accidents in dynamic task settings such as flying aircraft, piloting ships, operating control rooms, warfare, fire-fighting, policing and acute medicine.