Show Me the Data!
A Look at Data Sharing and Analysis in Aviation Safety
by Jennifer Caron, FAA Safety Briefing Copy Editor
When you think about it, we use data every day. Whether it’s studying the latest weather maps to decide if we’re going to fly, or reading product reviews to guide our online purchases, or navigating with GPS to find the best way to get from point A to point B, data is a key factor that influences many of our routine choices. In fact, data is critical to helping us make better, more informed decisions about practically anything in our day-to-day lives.
When it comes to aviation, data makes its way into the tools you rely on in the cockpit every time you fly. Avionics manufacturers turn the raw data from navigational charts and instrument approaches that the FAA produces into a wide variety of electronic products that feed into flight management systems, iPads, and mobile devices and give pilots greater situational awareness.
To improve safety we need to understand what people are seeing, learn from each other, and adapt.
But data is not only beneficial when it’s individually consumed. It is even more valuable when it is shared. Whether from person to person or throughout the broader community, the more information or data you share, the more decisions you influence, the more value you provide, and the more people you can help. Data sharing means collaboration and communication with the aviation community, and these are key factors that help the general aviation (GA) community and the FAA make important safety decisions to improve processes and prevent accidents and incidents. To improve safety we need to understand what people are seeing, learn from each other, and adapt.
Truly integrated data and collaboration, more commonly known as data fusion, is playing an increasingly important role in improving aviation safety. Data fusion delivers insight and innovation from multiple data sources and gives safety teams a better opportunity to understand the full context of events when incidents and accidents occur. Using shared data, the safety teams work together to identify risk, spot trends and causal factors, and develop safety strategies to mitigate risk before they lead to serious events or loss of life. Best practices and lessons learned are continuously shared to evaluate progress and identify areas to improve.
This issue of FAA Safety Briefing (articles each linked to below) is dedicated to the importance of data in the aviation community and the many ways that data is collected, analyzed, and shared to make better, more informed decisions, with the ultimate goal to improve safety and efficiency in the aviation industry. So let’s have a look at some of the ways the FAA and industry partners are working together to develop innovative approaches for analyzing data.
There’s an App for That
These days, data sharing is fast, easy, and convenient. You can even monitor your own personal data, thanks to movement-based wearables that track calories burned, monitor sleep habits, and show how many steps you’ve taken during the day. Your data syncs seamlessly to data tracking apps so you can pinpoint areas for improvement to help you reach your fitness goals.
Modern avionics have made the collection of flight data and flight performance analysis just as accessible. Air carriers are leveraging voluntary safety reporting programs, such as the Flight Operational Quality Assurance (FOQA), to capture and analyze flight data to identify safety risks and trends without fear of reprisal. Lessons learned from these programs are shared at industry-sponsored and FAA-facilitated events like InfoShare. The event brings together safety professionals from across the aviation community in a protected environment to share safety concerns, lessons learned, and best practices. Over the last few years, the general aviation (GA), university, and broader flight training communities have developed successful InfoShare events. ASIAS, the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing system, is another safety initiative that brings de-identified data from voluntary programs, like FOQA, the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP), and the Air Traffic Safety Action Program (ATSAP), and fuses it together to help form a complete picture of risks in the National Airspace System (NAS). This data is leveraged by the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST) and the General Aviation Joint Steering Committee (GAJSC) to monitor risks in the system and to proactively mitigate those risks before they lead to serious incidents and accidents.
Until recently, most GA pilots had no means of sharing FOQA or ASAP-like data to ASIAS because there were no systems available to capture and store GA data. GA pilots primarily relied on the Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) to report safety hazards. While ASRS continues to be an essential safety reporting mechanism, we needed to find a way for GA data to be shared with ASIAS. To meet this need, the FAA, academia, and industry created the National General Aviation Flight Information Database (NGAFID).
The NGAFID allows GA pilots to analyze and share their flight data in two ways. First, operators equipped with avionics capable of recording flight data can upload flight and engine data anonymously into NGAFID. Devices that record flight data offer an easy, and free way for pilots to visually analyze flight performance for trends and changes over time to improve their flying. Second, pilots can share their data with NGAFID from a smart phone/tablet using the General Aviation Airborne Recording Device, or GAARD™, mobile app. ASIAS developed the GAARD app with the MITRE Corporation to help GA pilots understand how they are flying and provide a way to collect and upload de-identified aircraft performance data directly into NGAFID, which also feeds the ASIAS database. All data collected from onboard avionics, a Flight Data Monitoring (FDM) recorder, or the GAARD app is anonymous and de-identified so pilots can share their data without any fear of reporting or reprisal. ASIAS leverages thousands of de-identified flights to help spot trends, such as excessive roll/pitch/speed, low fuel, unstabilized approaches, and flights that had a higher risk of inflight loss of control. These trends are evaluated by the GAJSC to help monitor and address systemic risks. The point is to help identify safety risks and emerging threats unique to GA.
As more data is shared and analyzed, groups like the GAJSC develop safety enhancements and raise awareness in the community through targeted outreach efforts like the #FlySafe Campaign. FAASafety.gov and the FAA Safety Team’s (FAASTeam) WINGS/AMT airmen proficiency programs are great resources for pilots and mechanics to help improve their skills and knowledge. More developments are on the way, including a complete redesign of FAASafety.gov with artificial intelligence capability that will use data to suggest customized training and flight activities.
You’ll learn more about these and other GA data sharing and analysis programs throughout this issue (scroll down for links to each article).
Surfing the Surface of Runway Data
Let’s take a turn and taxi over to data collection, analysis, and strategies used to improve safety on our runways. The FAA’s Runway Safety Group has created a new monitoring tool for the surface environment called the Surface Safety Metric (SSM). What’s revolutionary about this new resource is that it quantifies risk by using all available data on runway excursions, incursions, and other surface incidents to create a combined risk value. SSM measures against a comprehensive target reflecting everything that’s happening in the NAS — number of incidents with no injuries, incidents with injuries, fatal accidents, and aircraft or facilities damaged — and incorporates information from other data sources to improve safety. Read “Big Data, Little Team” in this issue to learn more about this exciting new development. SSM is just one part of the engine powering a multi-faceted tapestry of runway safety initiatives, such as the Runway Safety Pilot Simulator and the agency’s “From the Flight Deck” video series, designed to educate pilots and clearly identify hot spots and other safety-sensitive items.
Dedicated to Data at the FAA
Safety is the FAA’s core value, and data is the foundation for advancing the agency’s safety goals, both inside and outside the FAA. By focusing on data-driven solutions, collaboration between the FAA and aircraft owners, application developers, and manufacturers provides new and better data that will improve the products you use in the cockpit as well as the safety and efficiency in the NAS.
This fall, the FAA will launch Got Data 2.0. This effort is a modernized Data.FAA.gov (DFG), slated to be the FAA’s clearinghouse site for publicly available FAA data. In addition, a new developer portal will provide application programming interfaces, or APIs, so developers can discover open API specifications and obtain self-service access to FAA data for their applications.
Inside the FAA, the Chief Data Office (CDO) developed a data platform to integrate and provide agency-wide access to data. The cloud-based data platform unlocks, manages, and shares the FAA’s massive internal data resources. Its holistic approach makes the data visible and available to the workforce for greater insight into safety data across all lines of business. This will enable faster, data-fueled decision making and increase opportunities for analytics innovation across the agency. Employee participation in the Data Dexterity Program measures the broad spectrum of data needs across the agency and will help implement advanced data solutions and tools.
FAA employees and the public will soon be able to access regulatory guidance documents through the new Dynamic Regulatory System (DRS). This new system will replace the Flight Standards Information Management System (FSIMS), and the Regulatory Guidance Library (RGL), to provide the most up to date data. DRS will consolidate information and data from more than a dozen other repositories into just one single resource for all users. Look for DRS to launch at the end of this year.
If you like what you’ve heard so far, don’t stop now! Continue scrolling to learn more about data and its increasingly important role in improving aviation safety.
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Jennifer Caron is FAA Safety Briefing’s copy editor and quality assurance lead. She is a certified technical writer-editor in aviation safety and flight standards.
