Upcoming Safety Challenges in Aviation

A special issue of Aerospace (ISSN 2226-4310). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Traffic and Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2022) | Viewed by 5872

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: safety risk analysis; stochastic hybrid systems; uncertainty analysis; Bayesian estimation; agent-based modelling and simulation; air traffic management

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Guest Editor
Institute of Flight Systems, Bundeswehr University Munich, 85577 Neubiberg, Germany
Interests: air transportation; data-driven and model-based environments; predictive analysis; integrated airspace and airport management
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Air transportation is enabled by a complex of interacting socio-technical systems that works 24/7 worldwide. Thanks to systematic learning from incidents and accidents, commercial air transport has reached a remarkably high level of safety. Upcoming changes to this complex system are only allowed if the high safety level will be maintained. Prominent types of upcoming changes are: (1) commercial use of aircraft that have fewer or no pilots on board; (2) taking advantage of AI technology; (3) changing roles played by human decision makers. Often, combinations of these prominent types of upcoming changes apply and to a variety of safety-critical processes, i.e., from airline operational control and fleet maintenance to urban air mobility and air traffic management. These upcoming safety challenges also require novel regulation regarding safety criteria and safety assessment methods. Organizations such as ICAO, EASA and FAA are developing such regulations while supporting research is ongoing. This Special Issue is dedicated to research papers that address any of these upcoming safety challenges in aviation.

Prof. Dr. Henk A. P. Blom
Prof. Dr. Michael Schultz
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • commercial air transport
  • remotely piloted aircraft
  • urban air mobility
  • artificial intelligence
  • machine learning
  • human decision making
  • human factors
  • safety risk analysis
  • risk indicators

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 4092 KiB  
Article
A Resilient Forward-Looking Terrain Avoidance Warning Method for Helicopters
by Rui Chen and Long Zhao
Aerospace 2022, 9(11), 693; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9110693 - 6 Nov 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2852
Abstract
To reduce nuisance alarms caused by a fixed forward-looking boundary, this paper proposes a resilient forward-looking terrain avoidance method. The method constructed the resilient and adjustable forward-looking boundary model by using roll angle and navigation error, which makes the terrain data employed by [...] Read more.
To reduce nuisance alarms caused by a fixed forward-looking boundary, this paper proposes a resilient forward-looking terrain avoidance method. The method constructed the resilient and adjustable forward-looking boundary model by using roll angle and navigation error, which makes the terrain data employed by the forward-looking alert closer to the terrain data overflown by the anticipated flight trajectory, reduces the nuisance alarm, and improves the reliability of the alert. Using real digital elevation maps and simulated flight testing, the proposed method was observed to provide alerting that is superior to the traditional forward-looking terrain avoidance technique. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Upcoming Safety Challenges in Aviation)
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21 pages, 20324 KiB  
Article
A Simulation Study of Risk-Aware Path Planning in Mitigating the Third-Party Risk of a Commercial UAS Operation in an Urban Area
by Xinyu He, Chengpeng Jiang, Lishuai Li and Henk Blom
Aerospace 2022, 9(11), 682; https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace9110682 - 3 Nov 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1902
Abstract
UAS-based commercial services such as urban parcel delivery are expected to grow in the upcoming years and may lead to a large volume of UAS operations in urban areas. These flights may pose safety risks to persons and property on the ground, which [...] Read more.
UAS-based commercial services such as urban parcel delivery are expected to grow in the upcoming years and may lead to a large volume of UAS operations in urban areas. These flights may pose safety risks to persons and property on the ground, which are referred to as third-party risks. Path-planning methods have been developed to generate a nominal flight path for each UAS flight that poses relative low third-party risks by passing over less risky areas, e.g., areas with low-density unsheltered populations. However, it is not clear if risk minimization per flight works well in a commercial UAS operation that involves a large number of annual flights in an urban area. Recently, it has been shown that when using shortest flight path planning, a UAS-based parcel delivery service in an urban area can lead to society-critical third-party risk levels. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the mitigating effect of state-of-the-art risk-aware path planning on these society-critical third-party risk levels. To accomplish this, a third-party risk simulation using the shortest paths is extended with a state-of-the-art risk-aware path-planning method, and the societal effects on third-party risk levels have been assessed and compared to those obtained using shortest paths. The results show that state-of-the-art risk-aware path planning can reduce the total number of fatalities in an area, but at the cost of a critical increase in safety risks for persons living in areas that are favored by a state-of-the-art risk-aware path-planning method. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Upcoming Safety Challenges in Aviation)
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