Improving Situation Awareness (SA) and Performance: The Role of the Three Levels of SA and SA-Oriented Interventions to Drive Effective Emergency Response

This dissertation was motivated by the 2013 incident in West, Texas, where a fertilizer-grade ammonium nitrate explosion claimed the lives of 12 firefighters. Analyses of this incident revealed that a lack of timely and accurate information was a key factor contributing to deficient SA and decision-making. While SA has been widely studied in other safety-critical fields, limited research has examined the specific goals, decisions, and information firefighters need to build SA across the wide range of incidents they encounter. This dissertation addresses this gap by analyzing how firefighters develop SA in both fire and non-fire emergencies, and by testing how targeted SA interventions can improve SA and performance and reduce workload. The first study in this dissertation identified the goals, sub-goals, decisions, and information requirements for firefighters to build SA during six types of fire (house fire, vehicle fire, and aircraft fire) and non-fire incidents (medical emergencies, hazardous materials, and urban search and rescue). Findings showed that firefighters build SA through the integration of hazard, human, spatial, and environmental cues, with SA emerging as a dynamic, goal-driven process. This analysis extended Human Factors knowledge by clarifying the cognitive underpinnings of SA in both traditional and non-traditional emergencies and produced direct metrics to guide SA assessment and training. The second study in this dissertation evaluated the impact of providing SA-oriented information during a simulated fire response using a high-fidelity virtual reality simulation. Results revealed that timely, mission-relevant information improved SA, particularly perception and comprehension, and enhanced performance by reducing search and completion times. While reductions in workload were not statistically significant, higher levels of SA were associated with improved performance and lower perceived workload, offering new empirical evidence of these relationships in firefighting. Combined, the studies in this dissertation advance theoretical understanding of SA in high-risk domains, contribute new metrics for SA assessment, and provide practical guidance for emergency management. The findings highlight the need for adaptive training, realistic simulation, and to design of technologies that deliver mission-relevant information in a timely manner. By bridging Human Factors research and emergency practice, this dissertation offers actionable pathways to strengthen firefighter preparedness, SA, decision-making, and safety in increasingly complex operational environments.