Assessing risks in aviation, marine transport sectors

The aviation and maritime industries recognise that Human Factors are key to safety and are investing considerable resources into dedicated Human Factors activities. Yet the discipline, data and available techniques are rarely applied at the design and safety assessment stages, when they can be most effective. The problem lies firstly in the scarcity of good Human Factors data derived from the investigation of safety events, and secondly in the lack of effective feedback loops from operations back to designers. Currently, the only recommendations likely to be seen as cost-effective are changes to training or procedures, i.e. training operators to cope with a poorly designed system.

SAFEMODE aims to correct this, via improved assessment and management of human risk factors within a Risk-Based Design and Operation Framework for maritime and aviation industries. This will facilitate the involvement of Human Factors disciplines and techniques in the design and safety assessment stages. 

SAFEMODE will achieve this by pursuing the following objectives:

  • Collect, analyse and structure safety data into an Open Data Repository (named SHIELD) for both the maritime and the aviation sectors.
  • Define sustainable state-of-the-art standards of Human Factors analysis for safety events in the maritime and aviation domains, found on SHIELD.
  • Design, develop, and validate, through the use of domain case studies and strong industry involvement, a risk-informed framework that supports Human Factors analysis in design and operations (Human Risk-Informed Design, HURID).
  • Customize HURID to the specific characteristics of the maritime and aviation domains, in order to maximize its effectiveness and suitability to the domain characteristics, whilst distilling and leveraging common lessons and Human Factors best practices across the two domains.
  • Support the Regulatory Framework developments in maritime and aviation, with guidelines and recommendations for effective and sustainable Human Factors analysis of safety events, within a Just Culture framework to encourage reporting, and utilizing best practices (e.g. from aviation and other industries) to facilitate continuous monitoring and learning from operations, across and between the two domains.

More information about the project can be found at the project website.