Situational Awareness COPY Flashcards
The success of the incident depends upon, in part, on
Responders being able to make good decisions under stress
The first step in understanding how to improve your emergency incident decision making skills
Understand how quality decisions are made
The right question to ask when trying to learn about how things go wrong is
Why did it makes sense to them
What were the responders ________ when things went wrong
Trying to accomplish
What was the ______ of the incident and what _____ were the responders playing when things went wrong
Overall mission, role
What task or objective were first responders focused on that prevented them from seeing the
Bad outcome on the horizon
Honor the fallen by
Asking the hard questions
The traditional decision making process also called
Analytical decision making process
Rational decision making process
Step 1 of the Traditional Decision making process
Define the problem
Step 2 of the Traditional Decision making process
Identify the decision making criteria
Step 3 of the Traditional Decision making process
Allocate weights to the criteria
Step 4 of the Traditional Decision making process
Develop alternatives for solving the problem
Step 5 of the Traditional Decision making process
Evaluate each alternative based on weighted criteria
Step 6 of the Traditional Decision making process
Select the best alternative (making the decision, i.e. the easiest step)
Step 7 of the Traditional Decision making process
Evaluate the effectiveness of the action that was taken
Of all the steps (in the Traditional Decision making process) which one should the easiest
Step 6, making the decision
Process of Recognition Primed Decision Making was first discovered by
Gary Klein
For commanders to successfully use RPDM they must have a level of ____ to draw upon
Expertise
Another advantage of having an expert over a novice is their ability to process and comprehend _____ clues and cues
Negative
Stress triggers a reaction in the
Hypothalamus
The only hope you have in reducing the impact of stress is to
Reduce the number of chemicals (released into your body)
Reducing your stress can be accomplished using _____ like controlled _____
Stress calming techniques, breathing
Making _____ is one of the hallmark qualities of a good public safety responders
Rapid decisions under stress
Intuition, triggered by stress, can lead to the often-referenced ______, a primal decision process
Gut feelings
Working memory is horribly vulnerable to ____ if the data is not quickly passed along to long term memory
Degradation
When your brain is searching the images for a solution, the imagines your brain identifies it likely will not be
An exact match
_____ allows you to form subconscious pattern matches without awareness
Tacit knowledge
Your brain is efficient at taking pieces of a puzzle and putting them together correctly, this is called
Chunking
If a commander is unable or unwilling to make a decision because of _______, there’s a risk the responders may grow impatient and engage in _____.
Incomplete information, freelancing
RPD requirement #1
Situational awareness
RPD requirement #2
Tacit knowledge
RPD requirement #3
Mental modeling (display future results, making predictions)
RPD requirement #4
Self confidence
Another, less than obvious impact on one’s ability to pay attention is
Multitasking
_____ described situational awareness as being aware of what is happening around you and understanding what that information means to you now and in the future
Endsley
Level 1 Situational Awareness
Occurs when the decision maker captures the CLUES and CUES
The 2nd phase in Endsley’s 3 levels
Level 2 situational awareness: Comprehension phase
Level 3 situational awareness (Endsley)
Projection: make assumptions and predictions about future events
All three levels of situational awareness are
Interdependent
It takes, on average, _____ years of regular and routine acquisition of knowledge and skill practice to develop _____ level knowledge and performance if a student is in an environment of learning and/or practice ____ hours a day______ days a week
10, Expert, 2, 5
First level of the competency progression is
Unconscious incompetence
Four levels of competency progression
Unconscious incompetence
Conscious incompetence
Conscious competence
Unconscious competence
Number of barriers and categories
116 barriers
12 categories
The 12 situational awareness barrier categories
Staffing
Communication
Data and info management
Workload management
Mental models
Physical and mental stress
Commander location
Shared sense making
Goals and mission
Command support
Human factors
Attention management
Any responder not feeling some stress at a scene is either operating at a very ____ incident, or they are ___________ all that can go wrong
Minor
Not grounded in the reality of
When under stress, your brain may revert to using ____ decision making processes
Intuitive
Stress from taking _____ narrows attention and affects situational awareness
Excessive risk
There is a third option (with understaffing)
Don’t engage an inexperienced crews in a high risk operation
The likelihood of incident scene casualties is vastly reduced when a decision is made not to engage in high risk operations because of the ____ or _____ of the crew
Quality. Quantity
_____ as a barrier to situational awareness, may be a finding unique to public safety responders
Staffing
_____ is an issue universal to every domain where high risk, high consequence, high stress decisions are made
Communication
The human brain cannot ____ thr act of listening
Multi-task
In the aftermath of catastrophic events, Emergency scene commanders often confide that they were affected by an excessive ____ or poor management of their ___
Workload, workload
Pilot example
Stay hands off and in command
Major themes of workload management
Biologically impossible to multi task
Hands off, in command
Human factors barriers Loss of Focus example
Woman in church: seeing what she was looking for
Percentages to gather:
Good rule of thumb: 30-70%
Colin Powell: 40-70%
False sense that this incident is like all others where circumstances have been similar
Bias of confidence
A confident commander can be good. Under-confident can be _____, Over confident can be ____
Dangerous, deadly
The more routine or mundane an emergency call may appear, the greater the potential for responders to become
Complacent
Command support is a barrier that has direct connection to
Staffing levels
There are some tools responders can use to help manage memory and workload, namely
Checklists and worksheets
Memory of everything you have done
Retrospective memory
Memory of everything you have yet to do
Prospective memory
Worksheets help ___ memory
Retrospective
Checklists help you manage _____ memory
Prospective
Of the two types of memory, ____ is more fragile under stress
Prospective
Ego can result in ____ incident leadership
Kamikaze
If responders are given the latitude to inject their ___ or ____ into how routine work tasks should be accomplished, supervisors may expect to see independent action by responders (freelancing)
Opinions, personal preferences
Occurs when an organization makes operational or safety mistakes, often small and seemingly harmless, repetitively over a period of time without consequence
Error creep
Your minds point of reference of what is happening now and what’s going to happen in the future
Mental models
Situational awareness requires three things of the decision maker
Conscious
Present
Scanning
Laws of work interruption the first
Make more mistakes
Second law of work interruption
Miss more clues and cues
Third law of work interruption
Longer to complete the task
Fourth law of work interruption
Lose track of work performed prior to the interruption
There are 2 strategies that can help you manage the impact of being overwhelmed with information
Writing notes
Using checklists
This conscious awareness of your situational awareness has a name:
META-AWARENESSSSSSS!!!!
Lessons for the First Responders: 1
Responders with poor situational awareness can
still have good outcome, if only by luck
Second lesson for 1st responder
Decisions made with good situational awareness can
still have a bad outcome
Lesson 3 of the lessons for first responders
Maintaining situational awareness requires ___, ___, and ___ commitment to paying attention.
PHYSICAL, MENTAL, and EMOTIONAL
Lessons for first responders: 4
What you should pay attention to is
not always intuitive or obvious
Lessons for first responders the 5th one
Responders rarely realize they’re losing their ___ until it’s too late
situational awareness
6: lessons for first responders
It’s critically important to be able to form mental models of both
The past and the future
Red Flag #1 Failing to process the meaning of
clues and cues
Each type of emergency has its own list of __ to ___ of the most important critical clues. For a structure fire, one of the most important clues is the ___.
5-7, smoke
Red Flag #2 Underestimating the ___ of the incident
Speed
Red Flag #3 overestimating the ____ of the personnel
Abilties
Red Flag #4 feeling pressure to take ____ without considering the risk and benefit
Heroic action
Red Flag #5 Focusing on ____ or trying to process too much information
The wrong things
Best Practise #1, ____ your incoming information
Prioritize
Subjects under stress can remember __ pieces of unrelated information
5
____, not fire, is the prediction of the future
Smoke
4 attributes of ___ that serve as the primer for Level 3 situational awareness
Smoke-Color, volume, velocity, density
Critical data for residential dwelling fire decision making
- Smoke & fire
- Construction & decomposition
- Speed
- Realistic assessment of savable lives
Brannigan’s quote on building behavior following the laws of ____
Physics
“Every building has a common enemy and that enemy is GRAVITY”
First window of opportunity is for the ___.
Second window of opportunity is for the ___.
Third window of opportunity is for the ___.
Civilian
Responder
Building
Skin melts at
160°
Best practise #2. Set the strategy and tactics band on the ___ and ____ of your resources
Quality, quantity
Best Practise #3, never miss radio communications from your ____
Most at risk personnel
Missed radio traffic from at risk personnel qualifies as a
Near miss event
Best practise #4, be strategic when choosing ___ for command
Location
___ is the essence or the high level, broad concept of something
Gist
Best practise #5 Call a ___
Personal time out
Best Practise #6, use a
Command team
Subconscious cognitive tasks
“What am I supposed to be doing?”
Muscle memory tasks
“How am I supposed to do this?”
Copilots: PF, PNF
Pilot flying the plane
Pilot not flying the plane
Best Practise #7, control your ___ and ____
Distractions. Interruptions
Best Practise #8, Develop and maintain a strong
command presence
Having a strong command presence means having the ability to hold your ____ in check
Emotions
Best practise #9, Develop and train to _____ but build resiliency into training programs
Scripted procedures
Best Practise #10, accelerate your command knowledge and
Expertise
Research has further shown that as mamy as ____ of program attendees may forget as much as ___ of whay they learned within the first three hours following an instructional program
90%, 60%
