Situational Awareness: Think Past, Present & Future

Flawed situational awareness (SA) is one of the leading contributing factors to first responder near-miss and casualty events. In fact, it is nearly impossible to find a line-of-duty death investigation report that does not implicate flawed SA, or one of the barriers that flaw SA, as contributing to the tragedy. As often as flawed SA is implicated it almost seems tragic how little first responders actually know about how to develop and maintain it, how they lose it, and how they regain it if they do lose it.

This article focuses on some aspects of the first two, developing and maintaining SA. I want to share a concept that might sound strangely familiar if you’ve ever seen or read Charles Dickens’ classic, Christmas Story, as we discuss: Situational Awareness: Past, Present, Future.

Let’s take a quick moment to refresh on the definition of situational awareness for any of our first-time readers:

Situational awareness (SA) is a person’s ability to perceive and understand what is happening in their environment, in the context of how time is passing and then be able to make accurate predictions of future events… hopefully in time to avoid bad outcomes.

Based on the research of Dr. Micah Endsley, we know that SA is developed, maintained, lost and regained on three levels:

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Thank you!