What really is going on? Review of situation awareness models for individuals and teams

TLDR

Situation awareness (SA) is widely discussed but largely treated as an individual construct, while team SA has received comparatively little attention, making it a persistent challenge in complex collaborative settings. The article reviews and critiques current knowledge of SA and team SA, comparing prominent individual and team models. The authors conduct a comparative review of leading individual and team SA models. The authors conclude that systems‑level distributed SA approaches best describe and assess SA in real‑world collaborative environments.

Abstract

The concept of situation awareness (SA) is frequently described in the literature. Theoretically, it remains predominantly an individual construct and the majority of the models presented describe SA from an individual perspective. In comparison, team SA has received less attention. SA in complex, collaborative environments thus remains a challenge for the human factors community, both in relation to the development of theoretical perspectives and of valid measures and to the development of guidelines for system, training and procedure design. This article presents a review and critique of what is currently known about SA and team SA, including a comparison of the most prominent individual and team models presented in the literature. In conclusion, it is argued that recently proposed systems level distributed SA approaches are the most suited to describing and assessing SA in real world, collaborative environments.