Interesting to read that SA is starting to surface in discussions about diving skills... I'd like to throw in my vote and say that in my opinion, it's one of the most important skills a diver can have:
From The Six Skills...
<<Now on the face of it “awareness” may sound to some of us like a
west-coast, affected latte-drinking, new-age, best friends with Shirley
MacLaine on Facebook sort of thing. All in all probably not something we
readily associate with the apparently uber-macho sport of technical
diving. But being keenly aware is a vital component of safe and
successful technical diving operations.
In advanced diving discussions, we have adopted the term
Situational Awareness (SA) as a sort of catch-all phrase to describe what
we mean when we say: “keenly aware”; and probably for good reasons.
SA has been a core concept in high-stress operating environments, such
as the military and aviation, for many years.
In these milieu, SA skills support the ability of individuals to handle
complex and rapidly changing situations in which informed decisions –
directly relating to personal and team well-being – need to be made under
tight time constraints. In these high-stress settings, lack of SA is one of
the primary factors in accidents attributed to Human Error.1
For our purposes as technical divers, SA is best described as being
aware of what is happening around you and your team, and understanding
how the flow of events and the actions of team members
will impact your dive’s goals and objectives; both now and in the near
future. It also encompasses the skill of selecting which bits of
information are relevant and which are not and can be discarded. Put
briefly, SA is the chess-player’s skill but applied in an environment where
checkmate can result in real physical harm, and not just a wooden game
piece being knocked over sideways.
For example, a technical diver with true SA only looks at his
Submersible Pressure Gauge (SPG) to confirm how much gas is left in
his cylinders; elapsed time and his work level will already have informed
him what pressure reading to expect. Situational Awareness also informs
a good diver with small hints (like body language and trim) how
comfortable his companions are. It will allow him to notice that a team
member may have a piece of kit out of place (a backup light turned on by
pressure for example), usually before that team member does. Awareness
is to know exactly how far from the bottom, sides and top of the
environment being traveled through one’s fin tips are. Awareness is
knowing – not guessing – to within a few dozen litres (say a cubic foot or
two) how much gas is left in your buddy’s cylinders, as well as your own,
after a 500-metre swim into a high-flow cave. Awareness is focus and
mindfulness, which are necessary assets when one’s chosen pastime
includes swimming around in water too deep to stand up in.
The most authoritative voice in the study and application of SA is Dr.
Mica Endsley, and I would suggest you find a copy of her white-paper:
Toward a Theory of Situation Awareness in Dynamic Systems
especially if you are interested in digging deeper into SA theory and
practice. But it’s not required reading. As Endsley says, prehistoric
humans probably had an innate understanding of SA in order to survive.
Essentially, basic situational awareness is hardwired into us all, and we all
have the potential to be wizards at it. We just have to work at pulling the
skill out from behind all the civilized creature-comfort complacency and
cognitive bias that prevents us from bringing it into the game at playtime.
Endsley defines SA as, “the perception of elements in the
environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of
their meaning and the projection of their status in the near future.” And
she breaks SA capability into three levels:
1. Perception – of cues and stimulus from the environment
2. Comprehension – being able to determine the relevance of
incoming information to one’s situation and circumstances
3. Projection – the ability to forecast future situation events and
dynamics>>