The European vision for aviation development aims at reducing of 80% the accident rate by the year 2050, with respect to the year 2000, even considering the increasing traffic volume. Consequently, there is a need for accurate performance reporting, thorough analysis and adequate measures, flexible to reflect emerging issues in real time. The SmartSAFiproject aims at promoting Smart Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), based on a proper FRAM functional modelling of logic and relations of the ATM system, collecting data from all types of aviation stakeholders.
The main goal consists of improving the management and sharing of European-wide aviation safety knowledge, through its whole life-cycle: from the service provider's occurrence reports through EASA analyses up to dissemination of the resulting knowledge, back to service providers.
The specific goals of SmartSAF are to:
- improve data collection (reporting, investigation and analysis) for experts as well as for the community,
- design and implement Smart KPIS, according to the functional model of the ATM system, to properly evaluate the 11 ICAO's Key Performance Areas (KPAs) in an integrated way. Smart KPIs, which will completely remove any bias caused by the differences between people of a distinct background interpreting the same issue. This will also substantially raise the consistency of any data, statistics or information shared regarding the KPIs being evaluated.
- improve harmonization of performance knowledge, to share among stakeholders, through the evaluation of the knowledge quality.
The proposal is part of the original SmartSAF project, not funded by the H2020 program, whose main target was to exploit aviation knowledge by means of a formal model: an information ontology built on top of formal logics of knowledge representation. The ontological model would allow existing data to be described in a uniform way and would allow mutual interrelationships and in-depth understanding of the ATM system.
The main innovation of the research relies on enabling a systemic reporting and analysis of Air Traffic Management system as well as other complex socio-technical systems. In particular, the project aims at developing an innovative functional model to combine the structural properties of the systems with its main Key Performance Indicators of safety to enhance its resilience.
The project will define an innovative FRAM-based semi-quantitative framework to enhance traditional safety assessment for the ATM system and define the resonant system functions. These latter will help to identify particular transient causes which may not leave any traces if analyzed with traditional safety assessment techniques.
FRAM facilitates a robust system analysis to have a clear description of the system functions, studying their interactions rather than the single probability of failure. The nonlinear nature of FRAM allows to identify static and transient links between human organization and technological functions. The first outcome of project will show a model of functions that helps to describe how performance variability may occur in everyday operations and how this can be resonant through the system. This model will identify potential sensitive areas in the system¿s functioning to address the need for additional KPIs. The second outcome will result in identifying critical couplings and paths derived from a functional analysis of the collected operational data. Determining the critical paths will allow identifying the conditions where the everyday work may get out of control, due to the high variability of performance. The FRAM will address the choice of additional and innovative monitoring indicators which will offer the opportunity to properly understand the real operating scenario. On the basis of these indicators, it would then be possible to evaluate mitigating actions as damping strategy for the variability that may generate unexpected or unwanted situation: eliminating the hazard, if possible, or introducing barriers.
The functional model will be used as the basis for the formalization and harmonization of aviation safety knowledge, through offering a concrete solution for:
- Managing Informal Knowledge - Implementation of this knowledge by regulators and service providers is not achievable by most organizations. The amount of safety knowledge is immense and constantly emerging. The project addresses this problem by formalizing knowledge contained in ICAO, EASA and EUROCONTROL documentation, e.g. risk portfolios and guidance materials, identifying functional KPIs
- Managing Incoherent KPIs ¿ The new concept of functional KPIs will allow enhanced compatibility of KPIs measured within the industry, consequently making them more comparable and easier to oversee. Service providers may introduce own functional KPIs, which will be shared among different stakeholders, national regulators or other providers with the very same compatibility. The formal functional model will also allow converting KPIs already being measured into functional KPIs.
- Enhancing Unmeasured Knowledge Quality - The project proposes to identify novel knowledge quality indicators. Aviation Safety knowledge management is not a standardized process. Functional understanding of processes will enable to share common knowledge quality rules that could be automatically evaluated and which will indicate the level of quality of the collected knowledge. For example, the service providers often collect shallow data about event chains of safety occurrences or no data at all. Functional knowledge will also facilitate the quality measurement of the data collection process.
This performance-oriented framework will allow understanding and improving system resilience as an emerging ability of the ATM system to reduce both the magnitude and the duration of the deviation from targeted system performance levels. To this extent, the set of functional KPIs will include all the relevant performance dimensions, according to ICAO's eleven Key Performance Areas: safety, security, environmental impact, cost effectiveness, capacity, flight efficiency, flexibility, predictability, access and equity, participation and collaboration, interoperability.
In the ATM system, a resilient perspective meets the needs that the system requires in terms of high-level performance. Although procedures and regulations tend to specify working processes, the flexibility of the system and system oversight by human operators are essential for efficient and safe operations in normal and rare conditions. Evaluating and analyzing these capabilities gains a crucial role, mainly due to their proactive safety effects on the system