These are articles on the SAMatters blog.
It’s not something talked about often in situational awareness circles – over staffing. Far more often the focus is on issues of under staffing which, coincidentally, can be a significant barrier to situational awareness and can have a catastrophic impact on safety. There can be, on occasion, scenarios where an incident scene ends up having […]
Some time ago I had the honor of visiting and receiving a tour of the Hong Kong Fire Department training center. Many of the props used there are similar to what I have seen in the United States. However, there was one very noticeable difference in the maze they use to train firefighters. Noise! They
Noise Impacts Situational Awareness Read More »
As you attend conferences that have vendor display areas, pay attention to how many incident management software vendors claim to have programs that can “develop situational awareness” in first responders. This claim is often founded on the belief that as the software is able to capture, assemble and display layers and layers of data that,
Nine considerations when evaluating incident command software Read More »
Thank you for coming along for the ride as I discussed the impact stress has on situational awareness and decision making. This series reads like the chronicles of a virtual chamber of horrors. First responders, emergency responders or people working in dangerous, highly stressful situations, focus a lot of attention on tactical training and skill
Stress: The Nemesis of Situational Awareness Read More »
Welcome to part 8 on the series dedicated to stress. In the previous segment I talked about the vulnerability of your brain to become overloaded under stress which can impact your situational awareness. In this article I’m going to talk about how your perception of time can become distorted as a result of stress.
Understanding stress – Part 8: Time Distortion Read More »
Welcome to Part 7 of my series on stress and its impact on situational awareness. I appreciate all the very nice comments I have received by email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Keep them coming. Your messages inspire and motivate me more than you can ever imagine. Thank you so much! In the previous segment I
Understanding Stress – Part 7: Information Overload Read More »
Welcome to Part 6 of the Understanding Stress series. In the last segment I shared with you some of the ill-effects stress can have on vision and I made brief reference to a term that may be new to many readers – auditory exclusion. This is an important consequence of stress that can have tremendous
Understanding Stress – Part 6: Auditory Exclusion Read More »
Welcome to Part 5 of my discussion on stress. In the last segment I talked about the positive and negative impacts of hyper vigilance and its impact on situational awareness. While stress-released hormones increase arousal of the senses, the brain struggles to process all the information coming in. If you try to process the meaning
Understanding Stress – Part 5: Tunnel Vision Read More »
Welcome to part four of the series on understanding stress. In the first three segments I talked about the various kinds of stress people in high risk jobs can experience. For seasoned veterans, the information shared likely served as a good review. For newer members, it may have alerted you to the stressors that may
Understanding Stress – Part 4: Hyper Vigilance Read More »
Stress. Who needs it?! The fact is, we all need it! Welcome to part 3 of my series on stress. In part 2 I discussed three kinds of bad stress: Acute stress, episodic acute stress and chronic stress. Each of them triggered by different things. In some instances the impact is short-lived. In other instances,
Understanding Stress – Part 3: Some stress is good Read More »
