Team situation assessment and information distribution

Described is the cooperative work of constructing team situation awareness within two teams of a military command and control unit. Specifically discussed is how the distributed cognitive and cooperative work of decision-making of the two teams is structured. The situation enabled two different ways of distributing information within the team: one serial and one parallel. One team chose the parallel information transfer, the other the serial one. Discussed is the interaction patterns that emerge in the respective teams and their consequences for situation assessment and situation awareness. The differences are then discussed in terms of means of sharing information. Some hypotheses for future research are also offered.     

Improving situation awareness in crisis response teams: An experimental analysis of enriched information and centralized coordination

In responding to an emergency, the actions of emergency response teams critically depend upon the situation awareness the team members have acquired. Situation awareness, and the design of systems to support it, has been a focus in recent emergency management research. In this paper, we introduce two interventions to the core processes of information processing and information sharing in emergency response teams to analyze their effect on the teams’ situation awareness: (1) we enrich raw incoming information by adding a summary of the information received, and (2) we channel all incoming information to a central coordinator who then decides upon further distribution within the team. The effect of both interventions is investigated through a controlled experiment with experienced professional responders. Our results show distinctly different effects for information enrichment and centralization, both for the teams and for the coordinators within the team. While the interaction effects of both conditions cannot be discerned, it is apparent that processing non-enriched information and non-centralized information sharing leads to a worse overall team situation awareness. Our work suggests several implications for the design of emergency response management information systems.     

Keeping it together: The role of transactional situation awareness in team performance

It has been argued that communications in teams are a means of transmitting Situation Awareness to improve performance. This study explored the frequency and types of situation awareness transactions in two groups of teams. Twelve teams were grouped into either more effective or less effective teams, based on performance measures. Distributed Situation Awareness theory predicts that Situation Awareness transaction are a medium for co-ordinating teamwork, and that more of these transaction will lead to improved performance. Differences in the frequency and type of transactions were observed between the more effective teams and the less effective teams with the former having a higher frequency of overall communications and, more importantly, a higher number of relevant situation awareness transaction types compared to less effective teams. Situation awareness transactions supported the team in making sense of the situation they found themselves in as it unfolded and enabled team members to perform their discrete tasks and therefore contribute to overall team success.Relevance to industry: Teams are a major feature of most industrial applications of work and communication play an important role in coordinating team work. Communication has been found to be linked to both team performance and situation awareness. Situation awareness is distributed in teams through transactions of information. A study was devised to explore the differences between more effective and less effective teams on a number of situation awareness transactional factors. Analysing the team as a functional unit of situation awareness is presented for future work.     

An inference method of team situation awareness based on mutual awareness

Team situation awareness (TSA) is a critical contributing factor in establishing collaborative relations among team members involved in cooperative activity. Currently, however, there is still a lack of a clearly understandable and commonly agreeable model of TSA. To resolve misunderstanding or conflict among team members or between a team and machines, our research aim is to find out the underlying mechanism of TSA that reflects team cognitive process in a way consistent with team cooperative activity, and to focus on how to achieve mutual understanding, and how to effectively incorporate human teams into a socio-technological system. In this paper, we argue that earlier models of TSA, where TSA was discussed as the intersection of situation awareness (SA) owned by individual team members, are inadequate for study of a sophisticated team reciprocal process. We suggest that it is necessary for the definition of TSA to integrate the notion of individual SA (ISA) into cooperative team activity. In particular, understanding of mutual awareness is an essential element in cooperative activity. We propose a new notion of TSA, which is reducible to mutual beliefs as well as ISA at three levels. Further, we develop an operational TSA inference method and discuss human competence and system-related factors that are required to build TSA. We then try to demonstrate how TSA is actively constructed via inferencing practices. We also develop criteria to assess appropriateness of TSA from two aspects: soundness and completeness of mutual beliefs. Comparison of evaluation results indicates that the notion of TSA proposed in this work is more suitable to depict team cooperative activity than conventional ones.     

Is SA shared or distributed in team work? An exploratory study in an intelligence analysis task

This study compared two theoretical approaches to Situation Awareness (SA): the psychological school of thought and the systems ergonomics school of thought, by assessing measurement of team SA within these frameworks. Two teams were assigned and organised into either a traditional Hierarchy or a Peer-to-Peer organisational structure in a single case study design. Measures derived from the psychological and systems ergonomics perspectives were applied to assess their sensitivity for assessing team SA. No statistically significant differences were found between the two teams when measures originating in the psychological tradition were considered: differences were found, however, for measures originating in the systems ergonomics tradition. Literature concerned with team SA reveals a lack of consensus with regards to explaining the nature of the phenomenon as well as its measurement. This paper argues for a debate in the field to clarify what constitutes appropriate measurement techniques for team SA and suggests that these are taken from the systems ergonomics tradition, as suggested by the present studies findings.

Relevance to industry

Teams are a major feature of most industrial applications of work, and maintaining good situation awareness is important to successful performance. A method for examining the situation awareness of teams is proposed and compared with the individual models. Analysing the team as a functional unit of situation awareness is presented for future work.     

Design and Evaluation of a Team Mutual Awareness Toolkit for Digital Interfaces of Nuclear Power Plant Context

In the teamwork of nuclear power plants (NPPs), the maintenance of mutual awareness enables the operators to have an up-to-the-moment understanding of each other’s work and makes the collaboration more efficient. Providing interface support for mutual awareness is proven to be an effective way to enhance the operators’ mutual awareness in digital systems. What mutual awareness-relevant information to provide and how to present the information on the display are two questions worth studying. This research focused on the above two questions and provided a newly designed mutual awareness toolkit on the context of digital interfaces in NPPs. The usability of the designed toolkit was evaluated through a laboratory experiment. The influence of the mutual awareness toolkit on team performance and its interaction effect with task complexity was further examined under incident scenarios. The results showed that the designed mutual awareness toolkit improved the operators’ mutual awareness, while it did not decrease their individual situation awareness (SA) or impose extra mental workloads. In team diagnosis tasks, the teams using the mutual awareness toolkit more thoroughly discussed the incident scenarios and identified more key points of the incidents. The diagnosis correctness, perhaps moderated by other factors besides mutual awareness, was not significantly improved.     

The impact of computer-based procedures on team performance,communication, and situation awareness

In nuclear power plants, operating procedures are adopted to aid the operators in performing their tasks. With the evolution of computer hardware and software, the analog human-machine systems of the main control room in the nuclear power plant have been replaced with digital systems. Moreover, automated operations now outnumber manual operations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of computer-based procedures on the team performance, communication, and situation awareness of operators in the main control room. To achieve the purpose, a within-subjects experiment was designed and then a survey was conducted. The results showed that the teams had better objective performance and higher situation awareness when using computer-based procedures. In addition, the teams also had lower human error and lower communication rates when using computer-based procedures. This study proposes that computer-based procedures are advantageous to the operation of the systems of the main control rooms in nuclear power plants.Relevance to industryComputerized procedures system is one of the specific features for advanced nuclear power plant. This study explores and analyzes the team performance, communication, and situation awareness difference between paper-based, electronic, and computer-based procedures in detail. It may provide practical information for how to apply computer-based procedures to perform the tasks in the main control room of the advanced nuclear power plant.     

Perceived enablers of 3D virtual environments for virtual team learning and innovation

Virtual teams consist of geographically distributed employees working with a common goal using mostly technology for communication and collaboration. Virtual teams face a number of challenges, discussed in the literature in terms of communication through technology, difficulty in building trust, conveying social cues, and creating awareness, as well as cultural differences. These challenges impact collaboration, but also learning and innovation. This research focuses on how a social medium, the 3D virtual environment, is perceived to enable learning and innovation in virtual teams. We study this through a qualitative study based on interviews of distributed work managers’ perception of VEs. The major findings are that VEs are perceived to create collaborative learning atmospheres for virtual teams in terms of enabling engagement, a shared context awareness, and support in social network building. Another finding is that VEs are perceived to enable team learning, knowledge development, and collaboration through persistence of content, information sharing, learning through role-plays and simulations, and visualization. Furthermore, VEs enable the development of co-created content as well as new ways of working in virtual teams.     

Cognitive model of team cooperation in en-route air traffic control

Since controller teams are in charge of en-route air traffic control, team cooperation is a key issue for good control performance. We conducted ethnographic field observation at the Tokyo Area Control Center and then analyzed the obtained data to develop a cognitive model of team cooperation in en-route air traffic control. We segmented conversational records, behavioral records, and so on by control unit, and then clarified relations between the segments and identified expert knowledge and judgment behind them. Cognitive processes of controller teams were reconstructed based on a concept of distributed cognition. The analysis revealed that the mutual belief model is applicable to team cooperation processes, the role assignment of tasks within a controller team is implicit and that control plans are implemented smoothly once team situation awareness has been established. A cognitive model of controllers?? team cooperation has been constructed based on these findings.     

Observational assessment of situation awareness, team differences and training implications

The two goals were to investigate, first, the practicability and reliability of observational assessment of team situation awareness (SA) and, second, the nature of any team differences, their consistency and training implications. Five shift teams tackled three scenarios, each with three probe events concerning SA, and three observers viewed and rated concurrently each shift. This methodology was found to be practicable and achieved satisfactory rater reliability as indicated by intraclass and inter-rater correlations. Team differences in SA emerged although there was no consistent pattern. A retrospective analysis of individual and team behaviours relating to SA was performed using the Critical Incident Technique. A total of 75 incidents and 20 behavioural dimensions relevant to SA were identified and these were subsumed under planning, problem solving, team coordination, attention, communication and knowledge. These findings are discussed with regard to the nature and measurement of SA, and the content of training to improve SA for control room teams.     

Observational assessment of situation awareness,team differences and training implications

The two goals were to investigate, first, the practicability and reliability of observational assessment of team situation awareness (SA) and, second, the nature of any team differences, their consistency and training implications. Five shift teams tackled three scenarios, each with three probe events concerning SA, and three observers viewed and rated concurrently each shift. This methodology was found to be practicable and achieved satisfactory rater reliability as indicated by intraclass and inter-rater correlations. Team differences in SA emerged although there was no consistent pattern. A retrospective analysis of individual and team behaviours relating to SA was performed using the Critical Incident Technique. A total of 75 incidents and 20 behavioural dimensions relevant to SA were identified and these were subsumed under planning, problem solving, team coordination, attention, communication and knowledge. These findings are discussed with regard to the nature and measurement of SA, and the content of training to improve SA for control room teams.     

Autonomous UAV path planning and estimation

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have shown promise in recent years for autonomous sensing. UAVs systems have been proposed for a wide range of applications such as mapping, surveillance, search, and tracking operations. The recent availability of low-cost UAVs suggests the use of teams of vehicles to perform sensing tasks. To leverage the capabilities of a team of vehicles, efficient methods of decentralized sensing and cooperative path planning are necessary. The goal of this work is to examine practical control strategies for a team of fixed-wing vehicles performing cooperative sensing. We seek to develop decentralized, autonomous control strategies that can account for a wide variety of sensing missions. Sensing goals are posed from an information theoretic standpoint to design strategies that explicitly minimize uncertainty. This work proposes a tightly coupled approach, in which sensor models and estimation objectives are used online for path planning.     

User-defined information sharing for team situation awareness and teamwork

Abstract

Team members have different roles in various scenarios to maintain situation awareness. A collaborative system should therefore provide appropriate information to the appropriate person at an appropriate time. Considering the mismatch between the designed and actually used information, this paper proposed that users should define what information to share with their team-mates. Thirty-six participants, who formed eighteen teams, used both the traditional and user-defined shared displays to perform failure diagnosis on the context of nuclear power plants. The user-defined shared display exhibited shorter diagnosis time without significant difference in correctness. Information quality, instead of quantity, was positively correlated with team mutual awareness. This study provides empirical evidence that user-defined information sharing is effective at improving operator’s diagnosis performance, so the users should be able to tailor the information based on requirements.Practitioner Summary: To support team situation awareness and teamwork, the present study proposed that users should define what information to share with their team-mates. The laboratory experiment shows that user-defined information sharing shortens operator diagnosis time without degrading correctness. Information quality appears more important than information quantity in enhancing team mutual awareness.     

CSCW协同建组协商策略研究

提出了一个支持协商建立协同工作组的自动协商策略集合。该策略集基于PFCSP限制表示框架将时间和资源因素综合考虑,克服了相关协商策略分离研究的限制。其中反提案生成结合使用了“折中”和“放松”两种策略, 建组协商中特有的“组策略”被提出用于支持在建组内部统一意见的meta协商。通过分析各策略属性、通信开销和计算量,对该策略在协商建组环境下的正确性和有效性进行了验证,并以实例说明了策略的应用过程。     

基于CPLD的全双工扩展串行口设计

提出了一种基于CPLD的全双工异步串行口的扩展设计方案，其功能是通过并行口实现串行口扩展，讨论了此扩展口通信过程中握手信号的变化规则．根据本方案，设计了一个能扩展三个全双工异步串行口的实例，实现了串行异步通信口的扩展，并给出了仿真波形．此扩展串行口的每个子口可同时工作，并且每个子口的波特率可设为不同的值，适用于各个子口同时工作在不同波特率情况下的场合．     

Team-based work and work system balance in the context of agile manufacturing

Manufacturing agility is the ability to prosper in an environment characterized by constant and unpredictable change. The purpose of this paper is to analyze team attributes necessary to facilitate agile manufacturing, and using Balance Theory as a framework, it evaluates the potential positive and negative impacts related to these team attributes that could alter the balance of work system elements and resulting "stress load" experienced by persons working on agile teams. Teams operating within the context of agile manufacturing are characterized as multifunctional, dynamic, cooperative, and virtual. A review of the literature relevant to each of these attributes is provided, as well as suggestions for future research.     

Training teams for emergency management

Emergency management (EM), the decision making involved in directing the relief operation after a disaster or otherwise catastrophic accident is an issue of great public and private concern because of the high stakes involved. Due to the nature of emergencies, and especially mass emergencies, EM teams are faced with decision making in stressful situations, information ambiguity and overload, and a significant level of uncertainty, whereby non-routine problem solving of a knowledge-based nature is required. An important characteristic of EM is that it is a team of teams; multiple teams that come from different organizations, with different organizational goals and different organizational cultures, that work together to minimize the negative effects of the emergency. As a consequence, EM requires good coordination and communication not just within, but also among the various teams involved. Coordination among teams should, therefore, be a key focus for training. This paper describes EM within the context of naturalistic decision making, and proposes a framework, an event-based approach to training, together with a number of team training strategies that may be applicable to EM. A brief assessment of available training technologies and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Video Conferencing and Application Sharing: Routes to Awareness

There is little doubt that the creation and enhancement of awareness is a critical factor for the implementation and use of telecooperation systems. However, in a broader view, which includes the perspective on cooperative work processes, awareness turns out to be even more important. Awareness information-or the lack of awareness information-is also a crucial factor for the effectiveness and efficiency of cooperative work.

Three projects are briefly described to show the broad spectrum of possible target groups and goal orientations: Teams and Tess inkontakt are projects of the Institute for Work and Technology in Gelsenkirchen with a task-oriented business-to-business and a business-to-customer focus, respectively; the Poliwork project represents an infrastructure-oriented approach for the support of cooperative work in public administration.

To describe the crucial factors of projects like these, a perspective on awareness is needed that goes beyond the immediate communication situation and the use of computer applications. A set of awareness dimensions that focuses on organizational, functional, and personal awareness is proposed and discussed along with these 3 projects.