Situational awareness

Loss of life or property from a terrorist attack at home or on om troops on a battlefield wonld be minimized or possibly prevented by the capability to detect the presence of chemical, biological, or radiological agents anywhere in the world. Detection capabilities are also reqnired at borders and U.S. ports of entry, where shipping containers and vehicles shonld be checked for evidence of chemical weapons, biological weapons, and explosives. Beyond detection, the capability to nnambignonsly identify observed threat agents is required to maximize the effectiveness of our response. 

To meet this critical challenge, new technologies for detection and identification of threat agents should be developed. The availability of detectors that are small, ragged, and low cost would allow om detection capability to be dispersed widely at home and abroad. The objective must be instantaneous detection and rapid identification, both with near 100 percent reliability, because erroneous 

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Situational Awareness sensors generating an internal map of environment... 

The third grand challenge, situational awareness, poses the most numerons research challenges for chemists and chemical engineers. The science of sensing and detecting involves a wide variety of technologies and requires expertise in many different fields. 

The ability to respond effectively to an event will require first responders and HAZMAT teams to coordinate thousands of details. Development of new materials for advanced telecommunications and radar could greatly improve the current response standard. Materials that can lead to faster computers, higher-density storage, and more efficient telecommunications are vital. One example of a basic area of research that could have an impact on our ability to respond to a threat is wide bandgap semiconductors, used, for instance, in phased-array radars. The development of shipboard phased-array radar systems over the past few decades has provided the military with a very high degree of situational awareness with respect to airborne targets. 

Research needs for situational awareness stems from a number of chemical disciplines and other sources as seen below. 

As a practical matter, the tank crew s overall success depends on the speed and accuracy of the tank commander. As long as the commander sees the enemy tank or fighting vehicle before the enemy sees him, he and his crew can usually destroy the enemy. This is termed staying inside the enemy s decision loop. If the enemy sees him first then the outcome is likely to be catastrophic for him and his crew. Speed is of the essence. Also, crucial is the accuracy of the friend/foe determination to prevent friendly-fire casualties. Identification of friend or foe is highly contextual and depends on what the Army calls situational awareness. Situational awareness is highly complex and depends on an accurate understanding of the moment-to-moment dynamics of the fire and maneuver of the particular battle. 

CyLab and CERT Network Situational Awareness Center, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15313, USA jmchugh cert, org... 

Keywords Situational Awareness Cyber Defense NetFlow Network Measurement... 

Improve incident management communications and increase situational awareness across jurisdictions and between the public and private sectors. 

A strategy to implement the committee s recommendations can pay dividends over the short term, mid-term, and long term. In the short term, it can produce dramatic improvements to force readiness and overall situational aware-... 

Clinical diagnosis is the high-level activity conducted by clinicians that results in decisions being made that affect the lives of crews and the missions of warfighters. This activity is heavily dependent on training, on the level of awareness of the threat (field intelligence, situation awareness), and on the skills of the clinician. 

Another use of video monitoring is to identify when and where a release has occurred. Release of noxious incapacitating vapors can be observed as groups of people cough or pass out. In such cases, video monitoring can act as a primary detector for the presence of an attack. Video systems also have dual uses to providing feedback on the effectiveness of response options, such as evacuations, and for remote situational awareness. 

PROTECT, as currently implemented for WMATA, relies on human-in-the-loop response and decision making, except for the initial automated camera response triggered by sensors. Verification of detection, performed by staff in the operational control center (alerted to do so by the sensor alarm), is a necessary first step before any responsive actions are taken. CB-EMIS has been developed as a situational awareness tool where all event and supplemental (such as data on hazardous chemicals) information can be accessed and displayed. CB-EMIS also provides estimates of threat agent dispersion, the location of hazardous areas, and predetermined response strategies. These functions provide important inputs to the response decision making. 

Requirements development includes both the identification of perceived needs and measurements of real needs. For example, the suit s mask must allow the operator to maintain situational awareness of both surroundings and the protective system status. Development of these systems must be performed in close consultation with the operator community, who provide critical data on human factors as well as appropriate validation and testing procedures. Performance characteristics and threat specifications will require research to optimize the operation and protection factors. This wiU hkely require... 

Human-centered automation initiative is a good example of the technologies that attempt to avoid deskilling of human operators (Bilhngs 1996). Loss of situation awareness, which could have been... 

Jentsch, F., Barnett, J, Bowers, C. A., and Salas, E. (1999), Who Is Hying This Plane Anyway What Mishaps Tell Us about Crew Member Role Assignment and Air Crew Situation Awareness, Human Factors, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 1-14. 

The cognitive submodel architecture allows for the development of higher-order functions of cognition. For example, Shiveley et al. 1995 has developed and demonstrated a situation awareness function that combines characteristics of working memory, long-term memory search, and perceptual models to develop an abstraction termed situation, which can then be used to guide behavior or to serve as a measure of adequacy of information in the environment and in the crew s knowledge store to meet task demands. 

Situational awareness involves the perception of the environment that an individual is in, the comprehension of its meaning, and the projection of the individuals status into the near future (Endsley 1995). A new employee not only faces the processes required to adapt to the job, co-workers and management, but to ensure their safety, they must also maintain situational awareness. In other words a new employee must know and understand what is going on around them while they adapt. Arguably, developing new employee adaption processes which are effective and efficient should help improve both the outcomes of the processes, and the new employee s ability to maintain situational awareness during their adaption. 

Endsley, M. (1995). Towards a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors, 37, 32-64. 

For scales to measure other safety-related factors, the reader can consult Costa and Anderson (2011) for trust measures Zohar (2000) for safety climate measures Barling et al. (2002) for safety consciousness Sneddon et al. (2013) for situational awareness Neal and Griffin (2006) for safety participation and compliance Chmiel (2005) for bending the rules Cox and Cox (1991) for safety skepticism Neal et al. (2000) for safety knowledge and safety motivation Tucker et al. (2008) for employee safety voicing Tucker et al. (2008) for perceived organizational and perceived co-worker support for safety and Diaz-cabera et al. (2007) for safety culture. Another good source of information on safety measures are meta-analyses (e.g., Christian et al. 2009 Clarke 2006). 

Sneddon, A., Mearns, K., Fhn, R. (2013). Stress, fatigue, situation awareness and safety in offshore drilling crews. Safety Science, 56, 80-88. 

Chapter 7 provides a detailed discussion of the adaption and familiarization processes which a new employee will undergo during their initial employment period. These processes will place demands on new employees beyond those associated with their job and can potentially reduce the new employee s ability to maintain situational awareness. Organizations will vary in terms of how they handle new employee adaption and familiarization. However, adaption and familiarization processes can be managed to reduce the time required for their completion and thus remove the burden of these additional demands as quickly and as safely as possible. Chapter 7 notes how supervisors should be formally tasked with helping new employees adapt and familiarize. Chapter 7 also notes issues which may limit supervisor s ability to undertake these tasks, and how co-workers will often be involved in the process of helping a new employee adapt and familiarize. 

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