A comparison of shared and distributed situation awareness in teams through the use of agent-based modelling

Authored by Joanne Kitchin, Chris Baber

Date Published: 2016

DOI: 10.1080/1463922x.2015.1106616

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: NetLogo

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Flow charts

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

The question of how situation awareness is managed in a team remains a challenge for ergonomics. In this paper, a task was designed in which team members were required to identify a `rogue' vehicle in road traffic. In one version of the task, team members see the same information in the same format, and in the other version, team members each have a different view of the situation. Performance was less accurate in the second version of the task and this was not affected by communication between team members. An agent-based model was developed to reflect the performance of the teams in the experiment and to allow manipulation of team characteristics. The models showed that the `expertise' of agents affects not only their performance on the task but also their communication. This suggests that such modelling could be a useful line of research for the study of situation awareness.

Tags

Performance Dynamic-systems