“…situation awareness (SA), an internal conceptualization of the current situation, becomes the driving factor in the decision-making process. For novices as well, who may operate using very different decision strategies, understanding the situation frequently poses the major portion of their task. In most settings effective decision making largely depends on having a good understanding of the situation at hand…. Many human errors that are attributed to poor decision making actually involve problems with the SA portion of the decision-making process as opposed to the choice of action portion of the process. Decision makers make the correct decision for their perception of the situation, but that perception is in error. This represents a fundamentally different category of problem than a decision error in which the correct situation is comprehended by a poor decision is made as to the best course of action, and indicates very different types of remediation strategies”. (Endsley, “The Role of Situation Awareness in Naturalistic Decision Making,” 1997, pp. 269-270) “Concurrent with the growing interest in NDM [Naturalistic Decision Making], situation awareness has developed as a research focus in the past 10 years, largely in the aviation environment, but more recently in many other domains, including the nuclear power industry, automobile driving, air traffic control, medical systems, teleoperations, maintenance, and advanced manufacturing systems. Situation awareness is formally defined as ‘the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume to time and space, the comprehension of their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future’ (Endsley, 1988, p. 97). Situation awareness therefore involves perceiving critical factors in the environment (level 1 SA); understanding what those factors mean, particularly when integrated together in relation to the person’s goals (level 2); and at the highest level, an understanding of what will happen with the system in the near future (Level 3). These higher levels of SA allow decision makers to function in a timely and effective manner”. (Endsley, “The Role of Situation Awareness in Naturalistic Decision Making,” 1997, p. 270). Note: See also: Naturalistic Decision Making