Human Factors - Situational Awareness, Workload and Crew Resource Management
Situational awareness
SA has three levels: perceiving what is happening, comprehending what it means, and projecting what happens next. Most RPAS losses of SA begin subtly - the aircraft drifts while the pilot watches the screen, or a bystander walks into the area while attention is on the battery warning. Because the pilot is not inside the aircraft, degraded SA is harder to notice; build it deliberately with scan, callouts and position checks.
Fatigue, stress and workload
Fatigue is acute (one long day) or chronic (cumulative sleep loss) and is worsened by early starts and circadian lows. Stress narrows attention. Workload follows an inverted U: too little brings complacency, too much brings tunnelling and errors. Launch and recovery are the highest-workload phases, which is why a sterile cockpit and a briefing matter.
Decision making and CRM
Use a structured model such as DECIDE (Detect, Estimate, Choose, Identify, Do, Evaluate). Recognise the classic hazardous attitudes - anti-authority, impulsivity, invulnerability, macho and resignation - and their antidotes. Plan continuation bias and get-there-itis keep a crew pressing toward a site after conditions have changed. CRM for an RPAS crew means clear roles (pilot, observer, visual observer), closed-loop communication with readback, assertiveness, and the observer's authority to call "stop".
Traps
- "I have flown this site a hundred times" - normalisation of risk.
- Assuming the observer sees everything the pilot sees.
- Ignoring fatigue because the flight is short.
Rule of thumb and worked example
Run IMSAFE (Illness, Medication, Stress, Alcohol, Fatigue, Emotion) before every flight. If two or more risk factors stack - late in the day, unfamiliar site, client pressure, gusty wind - delay or reduce the sortie. A pilot on the third site of the day, taking calls from a client, has degraded SA; re-brief or stand down.