Projects

FLYSAFE is a 4 -year Integrated Project funded by the European Commission as part of the 6th Framework Programme. FLYSAFE wants to contribute to the ACARE goal to define innovative and affordable new means that will contribute to guarantee the highest level of air traffic safety by 2020. FLYSAFE aims to design, develop, implement, test and validate a complete Next Generation Integrated Surveillance System (NG ISS), going a generation further than the emerging integrated safety systems. The project is structured upon the three "threats" which play a major role in accidents:

• collision with other aircraft
• collision with terrain and obstacles
• adverse atmospheric conditions

and, for each of them, develop new systems and functions, notably: improved situation awareness, advance warning, alert prioritisation, enhanced human-machine interface. In synthesis the functions developed within FLYSAFE can be grouped in three main sets:

• traffic functions
• terrain functions
• weather functions

FLYSAFE has also developed solutions to enable all aircraft to retrieve, in the near future, timely, dedicated, improved weather information, by means of a set of Weather Information Management Systems (WIMS) which are able to gather, format and send to the aircraft all atmospheric data, as relevant for the safety of their flight, presented in an innovative and consistent way to the pilot. FLYSAFE has also defined appropriate means to present this information to the pilot in view of his/her real needs and the hazards encountered, whilst not increasing his/her workload.

As part of the NGISS, innovative system functions have been developed, notably:

• Strategic data consolidation to anticipate any identified risks related to atmospheric phenomena, traffic and terrain, along the flight path in all flight phases.
• Tactical alert management to help the crew to manage a tactical situation where an immediate response is required from them.
• Intelligent Crew Support to help the crew with cockpit interface usage and standard procedures application in order to lower the occurrence of Loss of Control situation.
• New displays and audio management functions.

To check that the functions being developed within the project contribute to the definition of a consistent overall system, and to the reduction of accident risks, the project has set-up a number of simulations and flight tests, involving a representative group of pilots to gain operational feedback, in particular:

• Several Part Task Evaluations (PTE): one for each function developed within the project. The PTE consists in a cockpit simulation performed with pilots to evaluate the different functions from an operational perspective. The PTEs were performed at different partner’s sites.
• A Main Task Evaluation (MTE) at the end of the project. The MTE consists in a cockpit simulation performed with pilots aiming at assessing the overall FLYSAFE concept, the NG-ISS, integrating the single functions developed along the project. The MTE is performed at NLR.
• Two flight tests campaigns aiming at verifying the technical aspects of the airborne weather tools.

Deep Blue role

Within FLYSAFE Deep Blue contributes mainly to the safety, human factors, validation and dissemination aspects. Deep Blue is the leader of the validation Work Package and of some safety Work Packages.

The safety assessment process in Flysafe is made up of three main sub-processes: qualitative safety assessment, risk assessment modelling and a quantitative safety assessment.

Deep Blue has a role in the specific part of the process which consists in the identification of the hazards whose severity and frequency can be reduced by the introduction of the NG-ISS. Each hazard is classified taking into account its severity and frequency and the expected safety benefit gathered by FLYSAFE.

Deep Blue contributes to this process by way of a Fault Tree Analysis, aimed to model the risk associated to each hazard both in the baseline and in the experimental condition. In the baseline the fault tree represents the possible effects of human errors and technical failures in the cockpit of a state of the art Airbus A320. While in the experimental condition the same hazards are modelled taking into account the expected mitigation provided by a cockpit including the surveillance functions gathered by the FLYSAFE NG-ISS.

Due to the specific role of the NG-ISS, the assessment pays a special attention to the interaction between the flight crew and the FLYSAFE awareness and alerting functions, going well beyond the consideration of isolated software and hardware failures. Thus the modelling is not operated as an off-line abstract exercise, rather it is progressively informed by three main information sources:

• The consultation and involvement of operational pilots to understand how hazards are mitigated and to validate the models
• The analysis of on-line safety databases and reports, such as the Aviation Safety Network and the Airliner Accident Reports by Fss.Aero. 
• A thorough understanding of FLYSAFE specifications, including the envisaged HMI elements, as they are progressively defined in the other strands of the project.

Regarding the human factors aspects the project aims to optimise pilots situation awareness through innovative HMI solutions and appropriate procedures. Deep Blue approach foresees the involvement of pilots during all phases of the design process to ensure that pilots needs and their valuable experience inform the design process.

Within FLYSAFE Deep Blue has contributed to the HMI design process of the traffic functions. In particular we have supported the definition of the traffic specifications, the choice of the most appropriate HMI alternatives tested with pilots, the definition of procedure alternatives and the selection of appropriate procedures for the Traffic PTE.

To support such activity Deep Blue has organised a focus group involving operational experts (pilots and controllers), human factors experts and the engineers developing the system. The focus group has facilitated the interaction between engineers and operational experts, providing a better understanding of the traffic functions to be developed, since the beginning of the design phase.

Before the traffic PTE, the traffic functions prototypes have been refined according to pilots and human factors experts feedback. The traffic functions being developed are:

• Surface Movement Awareness and Alerting System (SMAAS)
• Runway Conflict Alerting Function (RCAF)
• Airborne SPacing Application-Sequencing and Merging (ASPA-S&M)

Those functions have been evaluated by pilots during the traffic PTEs sessions. Deep Blue has contributed to the evaluation sessions through the use of the CRIA methodology, a methodology that aims at the investigation of critical interactions of the human, procedural and equipment components of a system. In particular Deep Blue has taken care of:

• preparing the human factors evaluation plan including pilots questionnaires and debriefing guide;
• attending some of the evaluation sessions and conducting human factors observations and debriefing with pilots;
• analysing and reporting the human factors results.

Deep Blue is contributing with human factors expertise also to the MTE, planned in early 2009.

Concerning the validation aspects, FLYSAFE wants to ensure that the development of the NG-ISS responds to the Project objectives. Deep Blue is the leader of the Work Package dealing with the project objectives assessment.

The aim of validation is to ensure that FLYSAFE meets the high level goals defined in the Technical Annex at the beginning of the project. To demonstrate the reaching of such high level goals, the validation team has broken them down into more detailed and specific objectives. Such break-down has brought to the identification of measurable objectives. Specific Work Packages are in charge of assessing if and how much the low level objectives have been reached by filling in a questionnaire prepared by the validation team. The questionnaire aims to gather qualitative and quantitative information regarding each low level objective with a standard and consistent approach. At the end of the process, all the scores obtained for each low level objective will be used to validate the high level goals.

In carrying out the validation activity Deep Blue has made use of the Project Goal Assessment Tool (PGAT), which has supported the two main phases:

• the break-down of high level objectives into sub-objectives using a tree structure;
• the computation of a score for each high level project goal by combining the scores achieved by each low level objective.

 Deep Blue has supported the FLYSAFE dissemination activity with the following activities:

• design of the project general leaflet in June 2006;
• support to the organisation of the FLYSAFE Forum n.2 held in Toulouse within the ASAS-TN2 workshop in September 2007 and to the FLYSAFE Forum n.3 held in Amsterdam at NLR in March 2009;
• production of the traffic video “Evaluation of the FLYSAFE Traffic functions” in September 2007;
• production of the traffic poster in September 2007.

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