In the aviation, maintaining a high level of Situation Awareness (SA) is one of the most critical and challenging features of a pilot’s job. Inadequate Situational Awareness were found to be the leading causal factor in a review of aviation mishaps. Due to the important role that SA plays in the pilot decision making process and its substantial role in aviation accidents and incidents, the training and assessment of SA in aviation is receiving focus in the operational and human factors communities. However, I am still not satisfied with the level of importance it has received. SA training can be focused at improving individual SA or at improving SA at the team level. Instructors and trainers are provided the tools to teach them in limited available during flight or simulator session. This blog is on how to self learn SA.
SA can be divided into three levels. L1 perception, L2 comprehension, and L3 anticipation. What makes good SA is ability to process large conflicting information and make a good decision in a short period of time. So lets explore how we can learn and improve our SA which is a life saving skill.
Level 1 SA – Perception. Perception is the organisation, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. In aviation terms, it could mean to be able to understand information either through radio, or instruments or your own senses. The crew who performed taks at correct place and correct time were able to manage their tasks in better manner. This allows them to prioritise and avoid workovenload. The loss of level 1 SA is due to following reasons-
- Information not available like in case of sudden change in weather like rain or water logging on runway is not communicated or ATIS not updated or when depth of water on runway surface is not reported. These can be categorised under the following heads
- system & design failures
- failure of communication
- failure of crew to perform needed tasks
- Information difficult to detect: if you take only 3 sec to flick through all the system pages then your SA would also be worth those 3 sec only. You are making the information difficult to reach you.
- Poor runway markings – Old marking still visible leading to confusion as in case of VOTP or VOBM airport. Poor lighting – very bright centre line lights as observed on few runways in India leading to disorientation at flare and landing roll
- Information not observed. There is plethora of information in cockpit or in Pre-flight documents. Repetitive information is likely to be missed as in NOTAMS. To be able to derive meaningful information from cockpit instruments, a scan pattern and flows are designed so that information is gathered and processed in time. Loss of information can be further subdivided into-
- Omission from scan
- attention narrowing
- task related distraction
- other distractions
- Workload
- Misperception of information due to prior expectation like entering wrong runway, SID and STAR.
- Memory error due to Disruptions in routine, high workload and distractions.
Level 2 SA – Comprehension which means ability to analyse, interpret the perception and to communicate it clearly. The pilot should properly assess the importance or severity of tasks and events. They should analyse the risk levels, system capabilities and personal limitations for dealing with situations. The research suggests that accurately determining the consequences of non-routine events appeared to be the problem for the pilots. Each of these factors (timing, risk, capabilities, consequences and severity) are major components of Level 2 SA for pilots. The research suggests that inexperienced pilots are less able to make these important assessments, remaining more focused at Level 1. The loss of level 2 SA may be due to following reason-
- Lack of/incomplete mental model due to Automated systems, unfamiliar airspace or mismatch of expectation of information or system behaviour. As a senior crew in a team understand your responsibility and take action to help your co-pilot and crew to cope up with situation. Move as fast as the slowest member of the team. Some day it could be crew, your co-pilot or controller or you. It is always better to extend the team membership to person outside the confines of aircraft. This could be rookie technician or controller who is undergoing training.
Level 3 SA – Anticipation. Research into accidents and incidents found that a significant portion of experienced pilots’ time was spent in anticipating possible future occurrences. This gives them the knowledge (and time) necessary to decide on the most favorable course of action to meet their objectives. Experienced pilots spent their significant time in pre-flight planning and data gathering and engage in active contingency planning in flight. Each of these actions serves to reduce workload in critical events. Using anticipation or projections skills (Level 3 SA) these pilots are able to actively seek important information in advance of a known immediate need for it and plan for various contingencies. Actively planning for various contingencies and not just the expected in flight is critical. Loss of level 3 SA occurs due to
- Lack of/incomplete mental model
- Over-projection of current trends
Pilots with high levels of SA actively seek out critical information. They are quicker to notice trends and react to events because of this. Furthermore, it has been noted that these pilots are good at checking the validity of their own situation assessments, either with more information or with others. This strategy is effective in dealing with false expectations and incorrect mental models.
Technology. Technology has been big contributor to SA. Non-normal event detection and recognition has been a very critical challenge area for pilots. Recollecting form good old days, when we had to decipher the correct non-normal situation by looking at gauges and then pull out the right QRH page for actions to be taken. Compare this to modern system where the faults are identified and check list is also displayed for ease. Or when you have multiple failures, the system helps you take action for the most critical failure first. Thus technology has definitely come to aid here.
Self Learning.
The best tools are perception, comprehension and anticipation. Remember all the pilots started just where you are in the left seat of a Cessna, Piper, Diamond or Cirrus. They learned just like you and went step by step from Level 1 to level 3. SA learning would include task management, contingency planning, information seeking/filtering and self-checking. Keep creating your models and cross checking it with actual. So create, cross check to update and repeat the same cycle. It is said that every flight is different, and it is your ability to visualise the differences that will help in building SA.
In this article, we have addressed SA issues for manned system with some automation. But what about SA in increasingly autonomous unmanned vehicles? How would we assess the interaction and collaboration between humans and machine. Will the autonomy level change with situation? How the ethical and liability issues be shared between human and machine while working as a team. I will leave it here for you to ponder.
Be Safe. Fly Safe.
