The team of officers who coordinate the effort and make decisions about where and how to drive a submarine depend on each other and the extended Control Room team to keep the boat safe in the face of uncertainty and change. The Office of Naval Research retained CSE Group to understand team sensemaking and decision making in submarine command teams, and to use that understanding to develop recommendations for training and display concepts. The team used a simulation-based interview approach to gather cognitive task analysis data from 71 command team members stationed aboard five boats that had recently returned from deployment.

 

The project team found that team sensemaking requires developing, sharing, and maintaining a team big picture view so they are poised to evolve plans as situations change through backup and support activities. They undertake planning and preparation to ensure that qualified people can deal with uncertainty that permeates the big picture view. Leaders actively assess and shape their teams, to prepare and enable them to make sense of novel situations. All of these activities are made possible by information sharing. This data-driven description and the resulting findings show how sub crews develop and maintain situation awareness. The CSE team offered four training recommendations as well as new concepts for information display to support shared situation awareness among the crew members.

For Inquiries or Comments, please contact:
Dr. Christopher Nemeth
Principal Scientist
e-mail: cnemeth@ara.com