Aviation/Measuring Safety and Controlling Risk

The drive for operational efficiency in aviation means that aircraft operations are increasingly run against a backdrop of measures and targets. This in turn generates an increasing need and desire to include safety as a metric that can be tracked and monitored. Safety, however, is not something that can be measured directly but risk has the potential to be an indicator of safety. The risk rating of individual incidents and reports provides a data set that has the potential to provide an overall indicator of operational risk. That data and its risk assessment is subject to a number of limitations, not least the fact that at best reporting data can only give a partial view of the risks that the operation faces. These limitations mean that any measure based on this data is fragile in nature and has to be presented and treated accordingly. Presenting the data to show the overall risk trend for the organisation can potentially lead to negative pressure on the reporting rate. To avoid this the reporting rate needs to be an integral part of any risk trending to ensure the value of increased reporting is recognised. Clearly the greatest value in collecting safety data is to control risk by using the data to derive measures that reduce the likelihood of an accident or serious incident. Risk measures can be used to provide a focus on the areas of the operation with the most risk and enable effort to be applied appropriately in those areas. The same measures will then allow monitoring of the effectiveness of those risk control measures by the subsequent reduction in risk.