Situational awareness is a person's perception and understanding of the situation they face. It includes their anticipation of what the situation may become, including the impact of their actions. For an incident commander, it is their perspective of the scene of operations.
This situational awareness, or mental picture of the incident, is the foundation for the incident commander to formulate a plan of action.
Maintaining good situational awareness of the incident is a critical skill. Incident commanders need to have the ability to build an accurate mental picture of the situation. They need to be able to do this in challenging, dynamically changing and high pressure circumstances, sometimes with incomplete or inaccurate information.
A person's mental picture of an incident is like a jigsaw, made up of many sources of information interpreted as a single view. An example of this is shown below.
Effective situational awareness ensures that the interpretation reflects the actual situation. This is critical for making appropriate decisions and predicting the likely effects of activities. The following may assist effective situational awareness:
Clear, accurate and timely briefings to and from the incident commander will help to ensure people share up-to-date information.
This may help to reduce demands on mental processing capacity. Effective organisation at an incident can assist with reducing distractions.
Can reduce the likelihood of becoming overloaded with information by delegating responsibility for certain areas or tasks. Delegation allows the incident commander to maintain an overall view of the situation. Maintaining good lines of communication is vital. They ensure people exchange accurate, relevant and timely information.
Incident commanders should regularly compare their mental picture with cues and information from the current situation to ensure their situational awareness remains accurate to maintain accurate situational awareness and detect changes.
The incident commander should be aware of the signs and symptoms of excessive stress. Stress and fatigue may impair situational awareness and they should take appropriate action to manage the impact on people.
