Evaluation of Distributed Situation Awareness on a Ship Bridge

Situation Awareness (SA) is an important cognitive aspect of the decision making activities on a ship bridge. The navigation crew uses the bridge systems to gather information elements and gain SA. Designers need to understand the SA requirements of the crew and develop systems with User Interfaces (UI) that support these requirements. The existing methods for evaluating SA are more fitting for assessing the SA of individuals rather than the Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA) that characterizes the ship bridge environment. This paper proposes a model-based approach for the analysis and evaluation of DSA that can be used in early system design stages. The methodology will use cognitive task analysis and fuzzy cognitive mapping techniques for knowledge representation, focusing on the SA requirements of the crew. The anticipated results include a cause-effect analysis tool and suggestions for UI design of intelligent systems.