Supporting situation awareness on the move - the role of technology for spatial orientation in the field

The study presented in this paper has investigated how technology can support spatial awareness when moving in wooded terrain. By “spatial awareness”, we refer to the ability to point in the approximate direction of several objects while navigating in unknown terrain. The ability to localize objects in the terrain has importance for emergency operations, for example firefighting and search and rescue operations. A field experiment was conducted with two conditions, one with technical support and one without. The results show that technical support in terms of GPS, digital maps and electronic compass can dramatically improve the ability to accurately indicate directions to objects. Further, findings concerning use of tests on spatial orientation to predict the ability to indicate directions to objects in the terrain when having no technical support are presented.