2020 Foresight—a Systems-Engineering Approach to Assessing the Safety of the SESAR Operational Concept

Abstract

This article explains why a new approach is needed for the safety assessment of the major operational and technology changes that are planned for introduction into European ATM up to 2020 and beyond. This approach has to satisfy two conditions: first, it has to be much broader than that traditionally followed in ATM in that it must address the positive contribution that a fully functioning ATM service makes to aviation safety and not just consider the negative effects that failures within the ATM system might have on the risk of an accident. Secondly, rather than rely simply on current, process-based safety-assessments, it must be based on a framework which, in accordance with European safety regulatory requirements, requires that “correct and complete arguments be established to demonstrate that the overall ATM System, as well it constituent parts, are (and will remain) tolerably safe”. The article presents the theoretical basis for satisfying these two conditions – it explains from first principles how current techniques such as Fault Tree Analysis can be adapted to model ATM’s positive, as well as negative, contribution to aviation safety, and describes how a rigorous safety argument can be derived from sound systems-engineering principles and be used to drive the whole safety assessment / assurance process. The article also gives an overview of how these principles were developed for application to the safety assessment of ATM development projects within the scope of SESAR – the Single European Skies ATM Research programme, equivalent to the US NextGen programme. This approach has already been applied by EUROCONTROL to a number of safety assessments including enabling projects for SESAR.