A situation awareness analysis scheme to identify deficiencies of complex man-machine interactions

This paper presents an analysis scheme which aims to support a
systematic study of required situation awareness (RSA). This scheme supports
identification of deficiencies of support for situation awareness (SA).
Information needs are goal and task dependent and can be defined using
existing cognitive task analysis (CTA) methods. RSA, however, is a subset of
information needs and depends on the interaction between goals, tasks, system
factors and individual factors. The analysis scheme has helped to identify that
the current methods to define RSA do not support a distinction between
information needs and RSA. The scheme was trialled in a nautical traffic
management context as an extension to existing CTA methods. The research
activities necessary to study RSA and to identify deficiencies of current support
for SA in nautical traffic management context were applied. The study showed
that the research set-up designed through application of the analysis scheme
helped to define RSA, and that RSA is considerably context and operator
dependent. Future research will focus on the potential for context-aware
adaptable interface solutions to allow for RSA dependent information
visualisation.