A Review of Situation Awareness Assessment Approaches in Aviation Environments

TL;DR

This paper reviews various approaches to assessing situation awareness in aviation, covering models, techniques, and future research directions to improve safety and decision-making in complex flight environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of current SA assessment methods, categorizes techniques, and discusses theoretical models across individual, team, and system levels, highlighting gaps and future needs.

Findings

Classification of SA techniques into six categories

Analysis of theoretical SA models from individual to system levels

Identification of shortcomings in current SA assessment methods

Abstract

Situation awareness (SA) is an important constituent in human information processing and essential in pilots' decision-making processes. Acquiring and maintaining appropriate levels of SA is critical in aviation environments as it affects all decisions and actions taking place in flights and air traffic control. This paper provides an overview of recent measurement models and approaches to establishing and enhancing SA in aviation environments. Many aspects of SA are examined including the classification of SA techniques into six categories, and different theoretical SA models from individual, to shared or team, and to distributed or system levels. Quantitative and qualitative perspectives pertaining to SA methods and issues of SA for unmanned vehicles are also addressed. Furthermore, future research directions regarding SA assessment approaches are raised to deal with shortcomings of the existing state-of-the-art methods in the literature.