Situation awareness

Situation awareness (SA) is the cognitive state in which an operator perceives the elements of their environment, comprehends their meaning, and projects their future status. The concept was developed in aviation psychology by Mica Endsley (1988) and has become a foundational construct in human factors, cognitive engineering, and the design of complex systems.

Endsley's three-level model distinguishes: perception (what is happening?), comprehension (what does it mean?), and projection (what will happen next?). The model is deceptively simple. Research on accidents such as Air France Flight 447 has revealed that situation awareness can fail not because the operator is inattentive but because the system provides ambiguous, contradictory, or absent information at the moment when comprehension is most needed.