Welcome to Situational Awareness Matters!
Whether you got here from a redirect from my existing website (www.RichGasaway.com) or you found this site through a web search or a link from another site, welcome. I’m glad you’re here.
This is SA Matters. The “SA” is the acronym for Situational Awareness and in the context of the title “Matters” means important.
To say that situational awareness is important for first responders is a gross understatement. It is the leading cause of near miss events and the leading contributing factor for casualty events.
I’d like to add the word “catastrophically” before the word important.
Why mark this page and visit often?
I have dedicated the past seven years of my life to the study of the art and science of decision making and to learn as much as I possibly can about situational awareness in the high-risk, high-consequence decision making environments of first responders, aviation, medicine, military, nuclear energy and others.
My desire to improve first responder situational awareness has consumed me. I am both an active researcher and a practitioner on this subject. In addition to my direct first responder experience of 30+ years, I also completed my doctoral research on first responder decision making and situational awareness.
At one time in my career I thought I knew all about situational awareness and how to make good decisions until I went back to school and studied the neuroanatomy and cognitive psychology behind it… and there is A LOT more behind it than I ever thought possible. And every day, I’m learning something new that I want to share with the community of my first responder brothers and sisters.
This site will be my forum to share what I have learned. I hope you will come along with me on this journey and be willing to participate so we can learn from each other while keeping our #1 goal in mind… doing everything we can to keep first responders safe.
Safety starts with SA!
Thanks for visiting.
Fire Chief (ret.) Richard B. Gasaway, PhD
Founder, SAMatters.com