Affordable Safety - or the Cost of Unsafety
We note that one of the proponents of the current airspace reform program in Australia refers, on occasion, to a concept of “affordable safety”. We note also that a cost and benefit study was undertaken on the airspace reform program.
We think the following references from documents commissioned by the EUROPEAN COMMISSION - Joint Research Centre - Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen - Unit of Technological and Economic Risk Management might be relevant. They show that it is possible to question the amount of money spent on aviation safety – as long as it is done in a constructive manner.
Note the focus on the term “the cost of unsafety”, which we believe to be extremely relevant to your current debate.
This model has been available since late 2000. We are surprised that your regulator would not have required at least a reference to this process in any safety or economic study carried out in relation to your airspace reform program.
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“…….The objective of this section was to estimate the cost of unsafety. To measure the cost of unsafety means to measure the costs of effects (i.e. accident chance) which are related to certain safety level of the air transport system. In other words, this section is useful to determine the cost for not implementing a safety measure (safety lack). The unsafety costs will become safety benefits when a given improvement measure aimed at increasing this particular safety target is implemented……”
PROJECT DESIRE: Development of a Method for Air Transport Safety Improvement through Quantitative Risk Evaluation
This 3-years project (Brite EuRam No. BE97 – 4110) was completed by the end of the year 2000. The following partners took part in the Project: National Aerospace Laboratory NLR (NL), Joint Research Centre (JRC/ISIS), Airbus Industrie, Sextant Avionique (FR), Marsh (GB) and Airclaims (GB).
The objective of the project was to develop and evaluate a quantitative risk assessment model of air transport safety, which allows cost-benefit analysis of safety measures. THE MODEL IS INTENDED FOR USE BY REGULATORS, AIRLINE AND AIRPORT MANAGEMENT, ATM ORGANISATIONS, AND OTHER DECISION-MAKERS IN THE AVIATION INDUSTRY, TO HELP SPEND THE SAFETY BUDGET MOST EFFECTIVELY. The project started with an assessment of the factors that govern the need to improve aviation safety.
New pressures on aviation safety, such as airport congestion, declining financial resources, ageing aircraft, insufficient safety oversight in some parts of the world, were identified. Safety assessment techniques that are currently being used were evaluated, and developments in risk based regulation were reviewed. The role of cost/benefit criteria used by decision-makers in the aviation system was discussed in the perspective of current safety assessment techniques.
It was believed that by placing accidents into a limited number of broad groups, based on the sequence of events and the likely severity of their outcome in terms of physical damage and deaths and injuries, a model could be derived allowing predictions for 'typical' groups of accidents.
Hence, the model architecture was centred on the 'single-consequence' concept, at the end of a chain of events. The consequence is defined as "the event in the accident sequence that resulted in the most damage and/or deaths and injuries". Detailed analyses of the expected outcome in terms of aircraft damage and the death of the occupants were carried out for each of the defined consequences.
A classification of causal factors in aviation accidents and incidents was developed enabling to describe the chain of events that can lead to a particular consequence. The classification provides a set of categories for the creation of an accident scenario, in which both the events (i.e., factual information – the 'whats') and the causal factors (i.e., causal information - the 'whys') related to a consequence are highlighted. For each of the categories, an attempt was made to quantify their frequency of occurrence in normal operations (Roelen et al. 2000).
In order to allow cost benefit analysis, a classification of cost factors was also developed. Both direct cost factors, such as those related to passenger deaths and injuries and aircraft physical damage, as well as indirect cost factors, such as airline loss of reputation, were considered.
Financial data for a large sample of some 1000 accidents was reviewed in order to produce a cost profile for each 'consequence'. The cost-side of the model is not intended to predict the costs of individual accidents but rather to provide an indication of broad average costs, which may arise from accidents falling into typical groups.
Although considerable care was taken in selecting the factors, the interconnections, the probabilities and the financial equations and data, it is expected that users will make their own choices to tailor the model to their specific situation.
The model describes 'average' accidents, both on the causal side as well as on the cost side. In reality, each individual accident may have its own peculiarities. THE MODEL SHOULD NOT BE USED TO JUSTIFY CUTS IN THE SAFETY BUDGET. IT SHOULD BE USED AS ONE OF MANY TOOLS THAT CAN HELP DETERMINING HOW TO SPEND THE SAFETY BUDGET IN THE MOST EFFICIENT MANNER.