Why we need to understand the role of technology in rapid decision making…

Every day, people in normal facets of life are making decisions rapidly through driving a car, cooking a meal or walking through a busy city. Traditionally, these decisions were purely an internal cognitive process of the decision makers, either an individual or team. As society moved through the technology age, rapid decisions have been supported or subsumed by technology (e.g. GPS Navigation). Thus, rapid decision making is now a socio-technical system; it is no longer a product just of our mind but of interactions between technology and teams of people. When rapid decision making moves from everyday life to safety critical systems, where experts are making a series of decision to maintain the safety in the environment, the use of technology is essential to achieving the desired goal. Safety critical systems include flying an aircraft, responding to a disaster or accident, performing emergency surgery and conducting armed combat. In these systems rapid decisions are being made without conscious effort through reaction to a continuous stream of input from the environment. That is, rapid decisions are influence by the situation awareness (SA) or the ‘adaptive, externally directed consciousness’ that resides in the system. Researching the phenomena of SA in rapid decision making matters because the way SA is distributed within a system is vital to achieving successful outcomes. If the right person or component does not have the relevant awareness the system can fail. Further, when new technology is inserted into the system the way SA is distributed changes, affecting the decision being made. My research will examine the domain of officials in sport, a safety critical system where referees or umpires adjudicate a game in order to maintain player safety and deliver a fair outcome. Through examining the introduction of technology into the sports official system, the research will be better placed to understand and shape the development of future safety critical systems, improving the outcomes for the users of these systems