When developing or modifying (air traffic control) operations
and procedures good practice requires that these are introduced
only after the safety of the designed or changed procedures
has been assessed as compliant with appropriate safety criteria.
In Europe, this good practice has been formalized by means of
the EUROCONTROL Safety Regulatory Requirement on Risk Assessment
and Mitigation in ATM (ESARR
4), which in turn has largely been included in the European
Commission Regulation laying down common requirements for the
provision of air navigation services (No
2096/2005).
NLR-ATSI has developed and applied a broad range of methods to
assess the safety of such changes in ATM. A database of
existing methods and techniques relevant for (parts of)
the safety assessment process is maintained. This implies
that NLR-ATSI is in an excellent position to combine and integrate
different safety assessment methods and techniques tailor-made
for the ATM operation and client at hand, leading to compliance
with applicable regulations in a cost-effective manner. The
safety assessment serves to support decision makers in choosing
between introducing the operation, improving it, deepening
the safety assessment to obtain more precise risk estimates,
or stop the current line of development.
NLR-ATSI has also contributed to the development of EUROCONTROL’s
Safety Assessment Methodology SAM,
which is being established as a means of compliance for ESARR
4. NLR-ATSI has performed many applications of SAM and the
related certification framework ED78a by EUROCAE/RTCA.
Example projects
NLR-ATSI's safety assessment methods can be applied
to various types of air transport safety studies, for instance
concerning collision risk, controlled flight into terrain and
wake vortex risk. The safety institute has been awarded many contracts
by Air Navigation Service Providers and airports to carry
out safety assessments to support the implementation of new
and changed operations. Some examples are:
- For Avinor (the Norwegian ANSP), the Safety Institute
has carried out a safety assessment of down manning staff
in towers at six airports;
- For LVNL (the Dutch ANSP), the safety institute has carried
out safety assessments of operations at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol,
like parallel approaches and departures, converging approaches, missed approaches,
crossing active runways, introduction of a new runway, building
a second air traffic tower;
- For Belgocontrol (the Belgian ANSP), NLR-ATSI carries
out safety assessments for the introduction of multilateration
and digital ATIS; and
- For ATNS (the ANSP of South Africa), NLR-ATSI carries
out safety assessments for the introduction of RVSM in Africa.
- For DFS (the German ANSP), NLR-ATSI has completed a study
to identify the safety implications of the use of GPS in
non-precision approaches, followed by a study of GPS stand-alone
departure procedures.
- Evaluations of the accuracy of GPS-based non-precision
approaches and transitions were carried out under contract
by the Dutch CAA and LVNL.
- Several safety assessments have been and are being performed
for Skyguide (the Swiss ANSP), including a determination
of collision risk related to P-RNAV transitions and approaches.
- NLR-ATSI is supporting EUROCONTROL in several studies
to establish and validate appropriate regulation for the
application of RNAV in terminal airspace. Other studies
focus on assisting EUROCONTROL in the development of safety
arguments to support implementation of RNAV operations at
European airports.
More details and examples on this topic can be found in the Example
studies section.
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