Both of those are important. One hand washes the other. If I was to to put it logically it's outline would be something to this affect:

Vision and Awareness

Having and Using the Minimap

Having vision: How much of the map is visible

This means warding of course to increase vision of the map. But not just warding itself, weighted importance is given to how you ward and it's effectiveness is determined as the sum of it's contribution to the awareness of the team. Where a ward that reveals more enemies, from being placed upon common routes, is worth more than a ward that is chilling in the base revealing less important data. Also, how much vision does the ward give that would other wise be in the fog of war.

This constitutes the map awareens contribution of Having vision.

Using Vision: What the player does twith the vision they have.

This includes the strategic elements you were talking about in regard to what a player infers with the vision they are given. This can be seen by the actions of the player. This may seem complicated at first but things become easier when you break them down. Every whole being the sum of it's parts.

Starting with the fist categories of what the player is capable and incapable of doing with the vision they have.

Capability is determined by the player characters stats. With their movement speed are they capable of interviening in a fight in time to provide assistance. Any type of assistence whether it be a stun to aid in escape or even just presence to cause hesitation. If a player is capable of interviening, but does not, you would say their awareness is less than if they did. If a player is incapable of interviening, then whether they have vision or not is irrelevent as they can do nothing with it so their awaress would be judged as unchanged.

Now the capable and incapable caegories will have subcategories of ability and inability.

Ability is what the player is able to do once they both have vision and capable of intervention. Is the player able to engage succesfully, given perfect conditions, and defeat the enemy or are they incapable of doing so and should instead rely on presence or aiding in escape of the caught ally? If a player is both capable and able, but chooses to only use escape tactics, you would say their awareness (of both the map and their own character) is less than if they did engage. Now this would also have to take into account the surrounding enemies capability and ability to counter engage.

A subcategory of incapability is inference, which you mention in your post.

Inference is the players ability to decide on the enemies most likely route and plan on their path to take given that decision. If a player loses vision of an enemy but that enemy is likely going to a certain direction, given the environemntal conditions apprent, then the player must then choose whether to engage the fog of war toward the enemy or not. If the player is able to make a reasonable inference (where the possibilities of action by the enemy are limited) and chooses to engage, then the subcategories of ability with inference would be taken into consideration and decide their level of awareness. If a reasonable inference is apparent, but the player is incapable of engaging and chooses to anyway, you would say their awareness is less than if they chose to disregard.

All ecaluation must take into account the limitations of a system of evaluation. With such allowances for if a player can make a reasonable inference, but cannot have the ability to engage, however they choose to anyway and somehow still succeed, then it must be seen that the players awareness of their enemy was supiorier, or the awareness of the enemy in their own ability was lacking.

Anyway that's just kind of a outline off the top of my head of how I would begin to approach the situation of evaluating awareness logically. It would need to be fleshed out a bit more for practical use. I can help a bit more in discussion if you want.