A Theoretical Framework for Shared Situational Awareness in Sociotechnical Systems

Sociotechnical systems are large technical systems comprising many stakeholders (e.g.: Supply chains, Transportation networks, Energy distribution systems etc.). Decision making in such systems is complex, as the stakeholders are inter-dependent and the large size of the systems leads to insufficient Shared Situational Awareness (SSA), which is important for participatory decision making. The aim of this paper is to develop a framework to understand the goals and requirements for designing processes to create SSA in such systems. The framework is based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and systems thinking perspective. The framework is initially validated by experts and will be further validated with experiments with stakeholders in several workshop settings.