Situational awareness is often misunderstood and misused in accident and incident investigations. This video and accompanying document explains the different elements within situational awareness and how these should be used to fully understand how and why an incident occurred.

The video introduces Endsley’s model of situational awareness (1995) and its three levels: Perception of data and environment, Comprehension of the situation, and Projection of future states. Incidents may occur as a failure at one of these levels; it is not accurate to simply say that someone lost situational awareness as this is too broad a term and therefore not helpful during investigations.

It also uses practical examples to suggest questions which can be asked in order to better learn from safety events and help prevent similar incidents occurring in future.