Driven By Data
How the FAA Safety Team Leverages Data to Improve GA Safety
by Tom Hoffmann, FAA Safety Briefing Managing Editor
If you are reader of the FAA Safety Briefing magazine, you’ve no doubt participated in a few (hopefully many!) FAA Safety Team (FAASTeam) hosted seminars or webinars over the years. Or perhaps you’ve caught wind of a new procedure or best practice to improve safety at your local airport. The FAASTeam Program Managers (FPMs) and Representatives throughout the country do their very best to relay engaging, timely, and relevant information to their stakeholders, whether it focuses on the type of flying you do in your local area, or is based on “big-picture” nationwide accident trends.
To do this, FPMs endeavor to keep their fingers on the pulse of GA activities by monitoring data on both a local and national level. The goal is to enable a proactive focus on problem areas. That’s easier said than done, especially given the veritable firehose streams of data springing from various sources and directions. Realizing the need for a more streamlined source of data to help FPMs better inform the community and direct more effective accident mitigation strategies, the FAASTeam has developed a new tool to do just that — FATDAT.
FATDAT — What’s That?
National FAASTeam Manager Valerie Palazzolo was among the first to recognize the need for a more efficient data analysis tool for FPMs, and so under her direction in 2018, the team initiated production of a new tool. FAASTeam Safety Liaison Team Lead Charlie Hamilton was chosen to spearhead these efforts. With Charlie in the left seat, a crew comprising FAA operational research analysts (Wade Weisenburger, Brad Billheimer, and Chad Porter), and a small FPM beta test group (Jay Flowers, Lance Little, Dr. Paul Foster, and Ryan Newman) was able to launch the new FAASTeam Data Analysis Tool, more affectionately known as the FATDAT, in just over a year.
“We had been trying to get a data analysis program for the FPMs for many years,” says Charlie. Using different types of programs, FPMs in the past had to work independently and spend hours manually crunching numbers for their regions. Since FPMs are not trained as data analysts, these methods didn’t produce results consistent with the FAASTeam’s national work program.
Every “Bit” Counts
Key to the success of FATDAT is its ability to easily consolidate critical safety data into one central repository. It pulls in data from three locations: the NTSB aviation accident database, the FAA’s Accident and Incident Data System (AIDS), and pilot deviation (PD) data from the FAA’s Air Traffic Quality Assurance (ATQA) database.
FATDAT has enabled new ways of looking at mitigation strategies.
Coordinating this data was no easy task since databases don’t all speak the same language. In fact, the team is still working to import data from another FAA Air Traffic source to better complement PD data. During development, the FATDAT team also had to contend with taxonomy variations within the data. Challenges notwithstanding, the tool has proven successful in harmonizing different data sets and giving FPMs a more robust look at aviation activity in their areas of responsibility. Filters within FATDAT provide even greater fidelity, allowing FPMs to sort data by date, time, airport, phase of flight, aircraft type, operating rules, and much more. This highlights another main advantage of FATDAT — making it easier to work with the data. “No more having to build pie charts,” remarks Charlie, “the tool does it for you.”
Houston-based FPM Lance Little can directly attest to FATDAT’s ease of use and efficiency, especially its ability to filter data by field office. “I used to ‘hand hack’ accident data for the entire state of Texas, then separate my data from the other three field offices,” says Lance. That once labor intensive practice now takes him only a fraction of the time.
Big Data, Meet FATDAT
Since FATDAT came online in June 2019, this widely-embraced tool has enabled new ways of looking at mitigation strategies. “FATDAT helps you look at safety issues on a large scale, and in a manner that makes it easier to develop a risk management strategy,” says Jay Flowers, National FAASTeam Aviation Safety Inspector. As a former FPM, Jay recalls using the tool to develop a mitigation strategy that successfully helped reduce the risk of PDs for students in the University of North Dakota’s (UND) flight program. FATDAT helped flag a pattern of PDs that occurred with two person crews, specifically when an instructor and a certificated pilot were on board. In probing UND’s curriculum, Jay discovered that crew resource management (CRM) courses were not emphasized until the very end of their program. His advocacy to place CRM coursework at the beginning of their curriculum ultimately led to a reduction in these specific PDs.
Jay’s expertise with FATDAT, along with his skill at developing an instruction manual, led him to becoming the current project lead. He adds that in addition to helping find and fix risk areas, FATDAT helps FPMs keep local Flight Standards District Office personnel abreast of safety issues via quarterly briefings and an annual report. These help drive local funding and resource allocation to better focus on specific needs. In addition, the detail contained in the annual reports is especially useful at the local Runway Safety Action Team (RSAT) meetings (held annually at all U.S. towered airports) to inform NAS users of any trends in their local flying areas. Contact your local Runway Safety Program Manager for more on RSAT meetings.
May I Suggest a Side of Runway Safety with Your Webinar?
So what’s in it for you? FATDAT may seem like inside baseball, but it can have a direct impact on your safety. FPMs and FAASTeam Reps now use this information to fine tune their focus on issues and solutions that directly matter to you. It’s about providing the right information, to the right people, at the right time. But wait, it gets better!
Where the proverbial bias-ply high-tech rubber compound meets the road is what I’m about to tell you, so hold on to your yokes. As I write, a team of experts is diligently working to completely revamp the FAASTeam website, FAASafety.gov. Along with efforts to improve user-friendliness and incorporate mobile phone platforms is a rather innovative approach to better data integration. The aim is to link up several different data sets well beyond what FATDAT currently uses, including but not limited to the FAA’s Safety Assurance System (SAS), the Airmen and Aircraft Registries, the Service Difficulty Reporting System (SDR), and the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS, aka NASA Forms).
Using an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system, the enhanced site will be able to “learn” from all these data sources and identify what training airmen might need. This behind-the-scenes trend analysis will also inform FPMs and FSDOs on what type of training will benefit a particular area or user group. For example, data sources may indicate a rise in weather-related accidents in the Northwest area of the U.S. The AI system would then be able to make specific weather training recommendations for pilots in that area, and prompt the FAASTeam to consider increasing or augmenting existing training to cover these weather-related causal factors.
The information an airman receives from the enhanced site will be based on the user’s profile settings and preferences. If your account shows that you are a private pilot, single engine land, in the Colorado area, and data indicates an increased risk for controlled flight into terrain (CFIT) accidents in that area, your MyWINGS page might automatically suggest a course or flight activity on mountain flying and/or night flying. The system may also alert you to a mechanical issue with your particular aircraft make and model based on incoming data from SDRs. With these enhancements, the sky’s the limit for developing more robust and proactive GA accident mitigation strategies for both trainers and trainees.
Delivering With Data
It remains to be seen how these updates to FAASafety.gov will impact FATDAT going forward. According to National FAASTeam Outreach Manager Brad Wood, “there is still a lot of good value the tool can provide, particularly with visual representations of safety data.” Jay and Brad have teamed up to boost the reporting power of FAASafety.gov and will work towards a solution that best fits the needs of the FPM and Reps, as well as individual airmen.
As for the timeframe, the advanced analytics and AI functionality of the site will likely take about a year to complete. However, be on the lookout for a Phase I launch of FAASafety.gov in late September 2020 that will debut some key look and feel enhancements to improve user experience.
“We’re excited about the potential for FATDAT and our revamped FAASafety.gov website to really move the needle on GA safety,” says National FAASTeam Operations Lead Kevin Clover. “Both tools will leverage vast amounts of data more efficiently, and in a way that better aligns with our risk-based strategies for education and outreach.” Stay tuned for more information in future issues!
Tom Hoffmann is the managing editor of FAA Safety Briefing. He is a commercial pilot and holds an A&P certificate.
