Including Safety during Early Development Phases of Future Air Traffic Management Concepts

Safety should be designed into future air traffic management systems from their very conception, which can be achieved by integrating powerful hazard analysis techniques into the general systems engineering process. The primary barrier to achieving this objective is the lack of effectiveness of the existing analytical tools during early concept development. This paper introduces a new technique, which is based on a more powerful model of accident causality—called systems-theoretic accident model and process (STAMP)—that can capture behaviors that are prevalent in these complex, software-intensive systems. The goals are to (1) develop rigorous, systematic tools for the analysis of future ATM concepts in order to identify potentially hazardous scenarios and undocumented assumptions, and (2) extend these tools to assist stakeholders in the development of concepts using a safety-driven approach. Keywords--safety; human factors; trajectory management; separation; air-ground integrated concepts