Effects of Different Scheduling Systems on Crew’s Situation Awareness Under Long-Term Operation Conditions

The crew’s cognitive ability has become a critical issue in long-term marine tasks with different scheduling arrangements. The present study aims to investigate the impact of long-term operation and different scheduling systems on situation awareness (SA), one of the most important cognitive abilities. 15 male simulated crew members, randomly divided into three groups of five each, were involved in the ship simulation operation experiment for 9 days. The experimental stage of three days each was adopted as within-subject factor, while the scheduling system was set as the between-subject factor, including three kinds of 24-h schedules. SA was measured by 3D-SART subjective scale and situation present assessment technique (SPAM) in an everyday indicator-monitoring task. The results showed the stable enhancement of the subjects’ SA with the increase of the experimental stage, and significant difference of SA did not exist among the subjects under different scheduling systems. It suggests that operators have good adaptability to the different scheduling systems under long-term operation conditions.