Distributed Situation Awareness in Command and Control: A Case Study in the Energy Distribution Domain

Abstract

Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA), in terms of structure and knowledge content, distribution, sharing and usage, has important implications for command and control infrastructure design, network configuration, performance and efficiency. Despite this, theory and methods for evaluating DSA in complex sociotechnical systems are currently lacking. This article presents a novel methodology for assessing DSA, along with a case study of DSA in the energy distribution domain. The Event Analysis of Systemic Teamwork (EAST) methodology was used to analyse three scenarios undertaken on a major UK electricity distribution network. In conclusion, an analysis of propositional knowledge networks indicated that DSA effectively ‘coupled’ the command and control networks observed. DSA comprised ‘activated’ knowledge objects that were held by, and shared between, the agents involved. Further, analysis of knowledge usage indicated that each agent involved possessed disparate but complementary levels of situation awareness during task performance.

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