Incident Retrieval from NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System

Abstract

The most basic goal of the aviation human factors discipline is to improve flight safety. This goal is instantiated in the optimization of displays and controls to make correct operation efficient and erroneous operation unlikely. Incident data are an important source of information for identifying safety problems and quantifying the safety of the system, including trends in safety, e.g., due to operational changes. Incident data can also provide insights from the participants as to the underlying factors and sequence of events or conditions that are present in safety anomalies. These data can, and should, play an important role in human factors research and the operation of human-machine systems. The Aviation Safety Reporting System is a voluntary incident reporting system with contributions predominantly from pilots and air traffic controllers. The database currently holds over 100,000 incident reports from the last five years. Each report contains information identifying the type of flight or air traffic control facility, the nature of the airspace, the experience level of the reporter, the type of incident, and often a detailed description of the circumstances which contributed to the loss of safety. The nonpunitive nature of the reporting system stimulates reports that are revealing of human error and systemic weaknesses. This depository of information provides a unique source of very high quality incident data.