Situational awareness is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time, or some other variable, such as a predetermined event.
It is also a field of study concerned with understanding of the environment which is critical to decision-makers in complex, dynamic areas such as ship navigation.
Situation awareness involves being aware of what is happening in the vicinity to understand how information, events, and one's own actions will impact goals and objectives, both immediately and in the near future. One with an adept sense of situation awareness generally has a high degree of knowledge with respect to inputs and outputs of a system, an innate "feel" for situations, people, and events that play out because of variables the subject can control. Lacking or inadequate situation awareness has been identified as one of the primary factors in accidents attributed to human error. Thus, situation awareness is especially important in work environments where the information flow can be quite high and poor decisions may lead to serious consequences.
The formal definition of Situation awareness is broken down into three segments:
1. Perception of the elements in the environment
2. Comprehension of the situation
3. Projection of future status.
1. Perception of the elements in the environment and 2. Comprehension of the situation:
Iceberg Season; The April Iceberg Season was well known to all officers.
Ice message; Ice messages provide vital information of the utmost importance. These messages shall be ordered by the Master to be treated in priority over passenger’s traffic.
Approach of the Labrador Current; Pilot Books and Pilot Charts clearly indicate the position of the Labrador Current. The drop in temperature was a good indicator of its presence.
Sea state; Sea of oil, without waves or swell prevents the sea from breaking against an ice field edge or at the base of a growler or iceberg. It so deprives an observer of perceiving the sea breaker photoluminescence during nighttime.
Moonless; A moonless night significantly lowers the luminous flux and its refraction on the ice. Visibility is reduced by darkness.
Falling air and seawater temperature; One can expect to encounter an ice field in the region of the Labrador Current when there is a significant drop in air temperature subsequent to sea water cooling.
Unusual refraction; Could have suggested that the ice would be perceived at a distance different than usual.
Routine Navigation Watch; No real additional activity was conducted that would have suggested the seriousness of approaching suspected ice infested waters, like for instance, the constant presence of the Master on the navigation bridge.
Lookouts without glasses; Ensuring that the crow’s nest was outfitted with glasses would have motivated the lookouts to pay more attention to the situation.
Night; Fatigue trigger by night shift decreases alertness and concentration.
Cold; Chill contributes to eyes water leading to impair vision. Fighting cold causes shivering, fatigue, loss of concentration and space-time consciousness to the extent of mental confusion.
Vessel’s Speed; A 21½kts pace was considerable for the time, compared to the average speed of say a dozen knots. At 21½kts, the reaction time is greatly reduced but a flotsam will still not be more visible than at 12 kts.
Lifeboats; The fact was known that the lifeboats capacity was insufficient
3. Projection of future status:
A collision against an iceberg at 22½kts, during a dead calm moonless night, on board a brand new passenger vessel carrying insufficient lifeboats capacity, could lead to disastrous human, financial and reputation consequences.
If my calculations are good, reducing speed from 22½kts to 15½kts (Half Ahead / 50RPM / Turbine Engaged) between 20h00 and 05h00, would require an average speed of less than 22¾kts to arrive New York before expected time...
Note:
Escalation of commitment is a human behavior pattern in which an individual facing increasingly negative outcome from the environment nevertheless continues the same behavior rather than alter course.
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. People tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.
Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations).
