Better decisions for aviation safety A novel decision support system (DSS) will allow airline operators and manufacturers to improve safety standards while considering their cost-benefit ratio as well. Climate Change and Environment © Thinkstock The EU is known for its strict aircraft safety standards and insistence on the highest levels of passenger safety. While aviation safety has a high price tag, new cost-efficient methods to continue ensuring advanced safety standards are emerging. The EU-funded project 'Aviation safety improvement using cost benefit analysis' (Asicba) aimed to upgrade aviation safety through a novel cost-effective system. This would enable airlines, airports, manufacturers and others to reduce risks, prioritise safety investments and justify expenditures in the field. The new approach allows those involved to evaluate the effects of technical, managerial and even political decisions against their costs and benefits. It helps them decide whether to introduce a safety measure and to pinpoint the most beneficial outcome. Overall, this step-by-step DSS enables stakeholders to take decisions regarding policy, procedures and operations in order to understand the consequences. It looks at safety from the viewpoints of policymakers and regulators as well as of industry, balancing affordability with safety requirements. The project results have been disseminated through conferences, workshops, online and via the project's network of contacts. It is expected to fulfil an urgent need for aviation stakeholders to manage their internal safety budgets in a cost-effective manner. Asicba will also help define future research activities and research targets on a European level. Moreover, the emergence of a common dataset on safety is expected to offer tremendous benefit to the European aviation industry. It will allow aviation stakeholders to set their own safety targets and measure current ones more efficiently. In the long run, this innovative model can be used for railways, the maritime sector and other transport means. It can facilitate benchmarking of different safety measures and help optimise the transport industry considerably. In a world where economic considerations have become very important, the novel DSS may indeed represent the future of safety in transport.
