Preventing Mid-Air Collisions: AGAS, Safety & the EEC

The high level European Action Group on ATM Safety (AGAS) aimed to determine how to make European ATM safer after the tragic Milan runway incursion and Bodensee (Lake Constance) mid-air collision accidents. The recommendations of AGAS were accepted by the Provisional Council in April, and the final report is available. Some of these recommendations relate to work at the EEC (EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre). For example, a significant focused study will take place at the EEC on the idea of rapidly ‘down-linking’ to the controller the fact that a TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) RA (Resolution Advisory) has happened. This is being explored because it is possible that if the controller had known early enough that the aircraft had had a RA, then the accident would have been avoided. However, there are many technical, human and safety issues around this concept, and not all controllers are in favour of the idea. Therefore a small team at the EEC (led by Garfield Dean) will be investigating the technical feasibility of the RA downlink, Human Factors aspects of its presentation (Dirk Schaefer), potential human responses (including errors), and other specific safety issues (Catherine Gandolfi and Barry Kirwan). The work will conclude in 2004, and is being funded by EHQ (EUROCONTROL Headquarters).

The AGAS report also recommends more automatic safety monitoring so that member states will know how safe they are, as currently most states still rely on controller or pilot reporting, which may be subject to under-reporting for a variety of reasons. Therefore, the ASMT (Automatic Safety Monitoring Tool [Tony Joyce & Brian Hickling]) developed at EEC is becoming more in demand, and the Czechs have visited EEC recently to view the tool for potential implementation, and CRDS (CEATS [Central European Air Traffic Services] Research & Development & Simulation Centre) also wishes to have the tool. In fact there is a queue of countries expressing interest. Since such implementation is however not R&D (Research and development), some of the responsibility for ASMT implementation may move to EHQ, and be dealt with by the Safety Management Unit.

AGAS also recommended various R&D work items, most of which will commence in 2004. However, some have already started or are about to start, for example the SAFLEARN project (Tony Joyce), a means of learning safety lessons from incidents, including what lessons can be learned for design and concept projects at the EEC. This work has already kicked off by analysing a set of incidents at Maastricht [MUAC]. Insights gained from such studied will feed into the new project SAFBUILD (Alistair Jackson and Fabrice Drogoul), aimed at getting safety principles and data into concept and design projects at an early stage to make them ‘intrinsically safe’. Linked to SAFBUILD is SAFSIM (Yann Kermarquer), aimed at capturing more safety-related information from simulations, whether real or fast-time. Additionally, work is ongoing to develop better safety assurance methods for design projects (SAND [safety assurance for new designs]: Catherine Gandolfi), and related safety support work has already commenced on EVP (European ATM Validation Platform), CAMES (Co-operative ATM measures for a European single sky) and ASAS (Airborne Separation Assistance System) projects. Two separate new research studies, also linked to AGAS, one on level busts (with NATS: Adrian Gizdavu) and the other on complexity (with MUAC: also Adrian Gizdavu, linked to Geraldine Flynn’s project COCA), have started in June. Lastly, as AGAS has raised concerns about safety culture, the EEC has carried out its own safety culture survey (Rachael Gordon), to determine where we need to improve in our ‘safety maturity’. This is the first time such a survey has been carried out in a research centre. The result is that the maturity is reasonable, but there is plenty of scope for improvement, and future actions are being considered by the Safety Awareness Group at EEC (SAGE). More generally, however, safety should be a consideration in all our work at the EEC. Although the safety resources at EEC are limited, the Safety Research Team is here to help, so if anyone has any concerns about safety or how their project can better address safety aspects, please contact us.

Following AGAS, there has therefore been a shift in safety research activities at the EEC: from developing sophisticated industrial data collection methods, to learning from data; from longer term to short term key risk issues (such as level busts); and a shift to more internal support to projects (e.g. via SAND, SAFLEARN and SAFBUILD). It is sincerely hoped that these new directions can help the industry understand and avoid further tragedies such as the mid-air collision at Lake Constance and the runway collision at Linate.

For more information on these safety research projects please see the Safety Research Team (SRT) portfolio or contact Barry Kirwan or any of the contact points mentioned above.

Barry Kirwan

EEC Safety Co-ordinator