ABSTRACT
Situation assessment is the process of acquiring data to understand or obtain a mental picture of the immediate environment; situation awareness refers to a person's understanding or mental picture of that environment. Situation assessment and situation awareness are closely related; at any point in time, the two are identical. Endsley (1995) lists three elements that form situation awareness, 1) perceiving the status, attributes, and dynamics of relevant elements in the environment, 2) comprehending the significance of these elements, and 3) projecting current assessment to future status. Thus, an operator would obtain situation awareness after receiving critical system-related information, understanding it, and using the information to predict the near-term system state. Endsley (1995, 2000) argues that situation awareness is based upon elements of both operators and equipment, suggestive of operator and equipment antecedents discussed previously.
