Situational Awareness for Aquatics and Recreation Specialists

Andrew Vaughan
May 2, 2018
7 min read

LEARN TO DEVELOP THIS INCREDIBLE SKILL IN NO TIME!

Who should read this

Waterpark supervisors, managers and directors

Aquatic Managers and Supervisors

Themepark and zoo managers

What will you learn

What is situational awareness?
How to use situational awareness in your facility?
How to develop situational awareness?
How to improve situational awareness ?
What causes lack of situational awareness?
Why is situational awareness important?
Situational awareness training
Situational awareness tips

What is situational awareness

“ Situational awareness is: knowing what’s going on by scanning your environment.“

More than 50 died and at least 500 were injured, making the Las Vegas massacre the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Did the shooter display any giveaways of the danger during his visit leading up to the attack that an alert staff member would have picked up on and alerted authorities?

Situational awareness is being aware of what is happening around you in terms of where you are, where you are supposed to be, and whether anyone or anything around you is a threat to your health and safety.

Ok , so the video, if you watched it is a little extreme but shows typical examples of situational awareness.

When an incident occurs in a recreational facility, a contributing factor is always the situational awareness of individuals, such as:

Did they RECOGNIZE the hazard?
Did they REDUCE the consequences of the hazard?
Did they RESPOND quickly, correctly and appropriately?

Examples of situational awareness emergencies in recreational facilities

“Situational awareness isn’t just for managing emergencies. It’s for anticipating and acting to prevent emergencies”

In an Aquatic or Recreational facility there are many different types of emergency threats ranging from minor to life threatening.

When staff members are alert to the warning signs then these emergencies can be mitigated.

Some examples of situational awareness are:

Employee or customer theft
Injury and illness
Fights and antisocial behavior
Drowning
Auto accidents
Sexual predators
Active shooter

How can i use situational awareness in my facility?

“Look for what is right first and you will notice what’s different or wrong”

Operating a waterpark is like managing a small town or city, especially if you have several hundred or several thousand people in a few acre space on a given day. With that comes the usual challenges a small city faces, such as, traffic and criminal acts.

Many times in my experience, when unfortunately, a guest has been the victim of a theft, I have been asked ‘Don't you have security?’.

Our leadership message to all our staff was that ’We are all security’. Without a way to train,measure and develop situational awareness then we are not prepared to reduce and respond to incidents such as theft.

Imagine walking up to a group of people who appear to be arguing in a park or pool setting and quickly ascertain the right way and next steps to diffuse the situation.
As you are walking through your retail area in your park on a busy attendance day and spotting something unusual with some of the customers and stop or catch them in the act of stealing.
Or you are scanning your wave pool on a crowded day and you quickly see who is displaying safe and unsafe behaviors before it escalates to a rescue or near drowning.

Can situational awareness be learned?

You can build, gain or recover situational awareness with practice. The first step is knowing that it exists and can be advantageous.

I have found it useful to use the ‘THREAT LEVEL’ index to get into a state of mind where you can be situationally aware WITHOUT being paranoid.

Blue level - completely relaxed, no threat, much like being at home in bed or meditating.
Yellow level - relaxed but you start paying attention to who and what is around you and assigning potential threats.
Orange level - you notice someone or something that may or may not be a problem and it remains in your focus until no longer a threat. You anticipate and begin thinking about how to react appropriately without making the situation worse.
Red level - you are actively involved in a rescue, guest dispute or avoiding a significant incident. Red does mean chaotic and it is especially important to remain aware even if things are moving quickly.

What causes lack of situational awareness?

Be aware of the following of interfering with situational awareness:

Loss of focus on what is happening. Refocus by asking what is happening right now?
Lack of information
Distractions
Poor communication
Inexperience
Multiple incidents and forgetting what is priority

Situational awareness exercises

Probably the first thing to do is an exercise called SLAM.

If possible take a piece of paper and in a public place at your facility or offsite and do the following exercise.

Stop- the act of telling yourself to stop gets you in the mindframe for the next step
Look - at your environment, what's changing and find the actions that may be a hazard to you and your others.
Assess/Anticipate - assess the chances that the hazard is realistic and anticipate what will happen
Manage - the environment may change quickly with potential hazards decreasing or increasing so act accordingly to resolve before the situation

BEFORE YOU READ ON, STUDY THE PICTURE ABOVE FOR at least 10 SECONDS.

Now answer the following questions:

How many people total were involved in this accident?
How many males and how many females?
What color were the two cars?
What objects were lying on the ground?
What injury did the man on the ground seem to be suffering from?
What was the license plate number of one of the cars?

Meeting icebreaker

After having everyone enter a meeting place ask them the following questions to different individuals.

They should not be expecting you to ask such questions. Afterwards explain why you were asking.

Where is the nearest fire extinguisher?
How many different exits are there?
Where is the restroom?
Close your eyes and say what directions using left or right or straight would you take to get out of the building and back to their vehicle or safety?

Exit interview

Watch any popular tv or movie clip for 30-60 seconds and ask questions like the ones below, specific to the scene.
How many people were in the scene?
How many were men or women?
What color clothes were some of the people wearing?
Who had blue eyes?
Were any wearing glasses?
Who was the alpha male or female?

People watching with a purpose

“People watching or crowd watching is the act of observing people and their interactions with their environment, usually without their knowledge. It involves picking up on idiosyncrasies to try to guess at another person's story.“ - Wikipedia

As you monitor an area in your facility practice observing people and anticipating their needs based on their actions.

Within reason and without being overly prejudicial create a ‘backstory’ for the group or individuals based on what you see For example, you see a mom with 2 kids playing in a splash pad area, and based on what you see you ‘guess’ the mom is a stay at home mom, bringing the kids out of the house for the day. You see she is wearing an apple watch so she is conscientious about exercising and walking and probably tracks her steps everyday. The kids are wearing t shirts with a Disney character on each of them so they may have recently visited one of the parks and may be from out of town, possibly from the Midwest as you recognize an accent from the mom.
The purpose of this exercise is not to get too carried away or extreme but start to develop ‘hunches’ about people and groups while observing.
This may also make you more empathetic to people and anticipate their needs such as offering appropriate assistance.

DOWNLOAD THIS PEOPLE WATCHING WITH A PURPOSE WORKSHEET

Kims Game

This comes from a Rudyard Kipling book where a person is training to be a spy. Here is how i like to use this game in an Aquatic setting.

Prior to a safety meeting, take 10-20 items from around the park setting that will fit on a table. I like to use anything from a rescue tube, gauze, rescue mask, stapler, gloves, head immobilizer, etc.
I cover all the items with a cloth before everyone arrives.
Without any explanation the first time, I simply remove the cloth for 5-10 seconds.
I ask the participants to tell me what they saw, which the first time, will not be much as they didn't really know what was going to happen.
I then show all the items again for 5 seconds and ask participants to write down what they saw.
I then combine all the lists and then reveal the table for the last time and see what items were missed.
Ask participants in a review why this observational game is important in terms of situational awareness.

Conclusion

“Look for individuals or groups who are demonstrating 2 or more ‘threat indicators’. Just because someone is wearing a hoodie doesn't mean they are up to no good”

Situational awareness isn't living in a high stress mindset at all times anticipating the worst possible outcomes. Correct recognition and assessment, i believe, can bring a more calm mindfulness in emergency situations.

Situational Awareness Checklist

Try to logically guess what individuals around you are thinking or doing.
Look for normal behavior and note odd behavior or things that seem out of place.
Determine where you’d go if you had to seek immediate safety.
Find the two closest exits, and how To get to that safety.
Determine whether someone is following you or taking an unusual interest in you.
Look for individuals or groups who are demonstrating 2 or more ‘threat indicators’. Just because someone is wearing a hoodie doesn't mean they are up to no good, however if they're wearing a hoodie, avoiding eye contact and looking around constantly THAT should be cause for concern.