Situational awareness is a key characteristic that is found in any operator situation, from air traffic controllers to chemical plant operations. It includes the sensitivity, knowledge and ability to tune into key aspects of situations under surveillance.
It is no less important in CCTV operations and is an essential part of the anticipation, identification and detection of incident conditions and events. Situational awareness is generally something that develops over time and experience, although we have seen appropriate training in incident detection greatly increase the awareness of personnel and accelerate their effectiveness.
The implementation of mobile CCTV platforms for town centres and areas such as sports stadia requires special consideration of situational awareness because the temporary duration and staffing of such surveillance seldom allows such awareness to develop over time.
Situational awareness occurs in three major ways:
* The ability to pick up the status, attributes and dynamics of elements within the environment.
* Comprehending and being able to put things together in order to get a complete picture of what is happening in that environment.
* Projecting what near term developments can happen in the situation based on the picture that one is seeing and one's feel for what is happening.
Close consultation
To develop an appropriate situational awareness, the setting up of cameras and systems needs to be focused on key features and concerns within the environment. Without being able to see relevant areas, any subsequent awareness and decisions are likely to be flawed. This requires a knowledge or close consultation with experts in the industry and the environment in which the CCTV system will be operating. In line with this, operators need to be aware of:
* The type of environment and possible issues, including risk areas and conditions, types of incidents, possible offender profiles etc.
* The site layout, relevant structures, and entry and exit points.
* The signs, movements and behaviour associated with incidents.
* Types of official responses to incidents, implications, and the monitoring needs for these.
Situational awareness ultimately results in an almost intuitive feel for situations under surveillance. Many of the best operators pick up that something is wrong even before they themselves recognise what it is. However, even average operators need to have a good feel of a situation if things are to be addressed in a proactive way rather than responding to things that have already happened. The more quickly operators pick up the relevant signs and their implications and become engaged, the more quickly they can influence the situation and help rectify it.
Situational awareness cannot ever be complete as there may be events that could occur that have not been anticipated. Establishing scenarios is part of management's responsibilities and these scenarios should have characteristics and a set of appropriate options for responses defined. This needs to be followed up with appropriate training, exposure and rehearsal for operators who are going to be on the scene.
Ultimately, however, a nominated managerial person needs to be responsible for integrating and providing the full perspective on the situation. This official would also take final accountability for decisions and outcomes. Recent events in South African at the Ellis Park stadium show just how important these factors are.
Dr Craig Donald is an industrial psychologist and specialist in human factors in security and CCTV. He is the co-developer of the Surveillance and Monitoring Assessment Exercise (SAMAE) for the selection and placement of CCTV operators and presenter of the CCTV Surveillance Skills training course. He can be contacted on telephone: 011 787 7811, fax: 011 886 6815, or e-mail: [email protected]
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